The Monroes: Winter Nights
by OllieOfFreeOxen
Summary: With so many people trying to kill him, can these really be Adam Monroe's last days? Part IV of IV. This part includes Clarisse, Time Cops, Greek literary critics, politics, Jeremy, Luke, and the Kenshi. Ignorant of Season 3, obviously.
1. The Seven Samurai

Hi.

This fanfiction is perfectly capable to be fully understood and enjoyed on its own.

However, it is a part of the series, and in case you would want to take a look at its backstory:

**Part One:** /s/4609031/1/The_Monroes_Summer_Days

**Part Three:** /s/4627949/1/The_Monroes_Autumn_Leaves

Thanks. I now present to you The Monroe's final installation:

* * *

**Part Four**

**Chapter One: The Seven Samurai**

To Elizabeth, the seven unofficial rules of the World Temporal Corps were as followed:

1. You do not exist.

2. If Rule One cannot be followed, you exist only as a tourist.

3. If Rule Two cannot be followed, you will do your best to be written off in history as a ghost, vampire, alien, or similar supernatural being.

4. Do not speak nor touch anything more than necessary.

5. In general, spend the least amount of time in the period as possible.

6. Do not do anything unrelated to you catching the target.

7. Do not kill the target.

In reality, all these rules which she had learned really were supplements to Rule One. In her first five missions, all of these rules were carefully followed, but after the sixth, it seemed the last three begged to be broken. Not that the Corps took note to exactly what each of their officers did on a given mission.

"He was being such a trouble," she remembered her co-worker explaining, "always threatening to shoot Winston Churchill, so we kept letting him go until Ethan got sick of it and just shot him. I swear, Colonel, I swear!"

And the Colonel would always give the same response of "don't let it happen again," with a scolding look, although he knew very well that it would happen again. As long as history ran the right way and nothing was changed. If you needed to spend a few extra weeks to get the target without a fuss, so be it. Needed to rob someone of a fair trial? All in the name of the law.

"Nice of them to give us a red car," Samson leaned back into the leather upholstery with a cigarette between his lips. Although it annoyed Elizabeth to the fullest, partners were of a man and a woman, since marriage was a common theme between all time periods. Samson was not the most handsome of men, having a unshapely nose that added ten to his twenty-eight years.

Elizabeth rolled his eyes at the remark and fiddled with the radio. "But this music, God I hate the 1950s."

"Wait, look-- straight ahead with the brown coat. Even winter in San Fran is too warm for a coat like that."

She shook her head. "Report said the target's displaced 68 kilograms, that man is past that by far."

"When's they-"

"When _are_ they," interrupted Elizabeth.

Samson scowled, "Yeah. When's they going to come up with a better way to track these people. We should at least know if they're a guy or a girl, but the amount of mass they've displaced? Might as well not tell us nothing."

"But it's more fun this way. If we knew exactly what they looked like, it would be too easy. We'd be out of our jobs." Elizabeth stopped fiddling with the radio and tried not to fiddle with her dress. "Just keep an eye out. He or she teleported right into this cinema."

For a moment, Samson didn't speak. "Wait, I'm confused," he said. "He teleported into this movie theatre an hour and twenty minutes ago. So according to you, he watched a movie, which should be an hour and twenty minutes long, so he should be leaving with the rest of the crowd."

"That is correct. Just watch, he should be coming out any minute now."

Samson looked amused. "What if he wanted to see The Ten Commandments? The top grossing movie for the year and it's more than three hours long."

"Well," Elizabeth stated plainly, "we'll just keep watching for three hours then, won't we?"

Samson rolled his eyes and got out of the car despite Elizabeth's protests. "Screw it! I could be on the Tut case right now. Let's get this over with."

"Samson Montgomery, don't you dare!"

Just as she stomped out of the car to follow him running into the theatre, the whole scene changed. Every car, every person was absolutely still, as if made of wax. She carefully parted through them, running to catch up with the only moving figure with the rough thumps of his feet trailing behind.

"I see him, Liz!" he could hear him shouting. "Hurry! Get a move on!"

She stopped where there were lights from the restrooms. "Where? I can't see a thing!"

"Follow the sound of my voice! He's getting away!"

Every time she could up enough to see her partner, he took another corner, and she lost him again. She swore, silently taking steps down the hall, to each theatre, where she poked her head in and made sure was empty of animated people.

It was fun, actually. She could never imagine paying actual money to see such low quality films, and from the stills of each of them, she could just wonder exactly what they were about. Some were quite apparent, like the screen of robed men obviously being from The Ten Commandments, but others were stills of not much at all, like shadows and shapes that would surely make sense if they were moving.

One was of a few men on horses with huts in the background, which Elizabeth found especially intriguing until she remembered that they were in the middle of the Kurosawa film era. She wondered just what kind of American was watching this film anyway, and for a moment of pure Rule Six rule-breaking, she looked out into the crowd.

It was a strange occurrence indeed, and she had to go near the man and get his face into a better light from the screen to be completely sure. Right then, right there, he was with a severely amused face half full of popcorn. She leaned in closer and closer, making her self absolutely and completely sure it was the man most commonly known as Adam Monroe, same as ever.

"Boo!"

Elizabeth screamed, spinning around to see no one. She looked around the theatre, gasped, and then yelled in outrage.

"What the hell is going on? Liz?" Samson came through the theatre entrance, nearly out of breath. "Did you get him? I saw him come into here!"

She swallowed. "No. He was right behind me, right... right here! Fuck, I could've gotten him, but now he... he got away. He's gone."

"No worries, Liz." Samson coughed, placing himself in one of the many empty seats. "I saw him; I know what he looks like. We'll get him next time."

Even with his apparent conviction, Elizabeth wasn't so convinced. She rolled her eyes at her partner and then closed them. She disappeared.

He could get the car.

* * *

**A/N:** The Seven Samurai was this really popular film from 1956 where this village hires these samurais to protect them from thieves. I haven't seen it, but I would imagine Adam would get a kick out of it...

Reviews and flames are greatly appreciated. Thank you.


	2. Clarisse

**Chapter Two: Clarisse**

It seemed that the Greek island of Elafonisos was a particularly sunny place considering it was part of the only country in Europe that had a majority of hydrokinetics, water-breathers, and the like. Weathermen were known to be flooded away from the place, but Clarisse was absolutely convinced that some had been snuck in, if not to maintain the lush vegetation and clear waters, then to maintain the country's tourism industry.

A soft sigh of lazy happiness sounded from Clarisse as she flipped herself over, pulled her hair up, and stretched herself over the towel. Yes, the weather was just right with enough sun to start an early summer tan, but enough wind to cool her off. The waves made for excellent background music, and for once in her life, she was absolutely content.

The sun was gone. She could feel the sudden presence of a shadow relieving her tanning session, and once she dared to rotate her head to see what was the matter, the bucket of sea water was thrown upon her.

"You little pieces of shit!"

Clarisse scrambled up, shaking off the excess of wetness that had drenched her. She gritted her teeth up at the two boys in the air above the water, each the same height and build with the same fine hair, but were discernable upon closer inspection. The one with the red swimming shorts was flipping and laughing through the air while the other, with blue shorts, hovered just above the water with a lesser sense of balance, but still holding his stomach with even more joy.

She picked up a rubber ball that had seemed to wash up, tossed it in her hand, and whipped it at the boy in the red shorts.

It hit him square in the forehead, and with a sort of stumble, he could keep himself in the air. However, he did lose that one second of concentration, which resulted in letting his twin fall with a small splash into the water.

"Clarisse!"

A strange thing happened. Clarisse turned around with a whiny face, but then suddenly, instantly, her face was blank, surprised even, and she blinked a few times. She looked about herself, and then scowled and wiped the droplets of water from her body.

"Clarisse, no throwing!" her mother called angrily again.

Clarisse blinked a few times at her mother. "Sorry, did I throw something?" She looked genuinely confused, and followed with, "I was just tanning, when I suddenly I was..."

"You're only thirteen, what do you need to..." This time, her mother stood up, keeping her sun hat on her head. "Enough! Come here! All three of you!" she roared.

The two twins walked sheepishly away from the water with their heads down. Clarisse looked cross about her mother not understanding, being her school geek and... and having a particularly unusual marital situation. Nevertheless, she followed the boys up the sand. Upon seeing her one brother in blue shorts trying his hardest not to laugh, she gasped, screaming, "You! Didn't I tell you never to mess with my memory again! You little twat!"

She chased him while he ran with such a laugh that made him loose his breath faster, allowing his sister to almost tackle him if not for their mother's furious voice.

The three of them eventually stood in a line in front of their mother, all with their heads down in fear.

"You! All of you! I'm sick of it! No abilities for the rest of the trip!" Kate growled.

They all shouted in protest, but Clarisse found herself to be saying louder than the others, "Why don't you ask Dad what he thinks?"

Adam was on his back, silent, full in the sun. He had been complaining about how unfashionably white his skin was for the past month. Once Kate elbowed him, he woke up, lifted his head with squinted eyes, and made what he could for what was happening by what he saw.

"Listen to your mother," he yawned and went back to sleep.

The three started yelling again, in outrage, but were shot down with one look.

Kate hissed, "Clarisse, no aiming, no throwing, no thinking about accurately hitting anything."

"Not fair! I didn't even-"

"Which leads to Luke, no wiping anyone's memories!"

Luke, the twin in blue shorts, was still trying not to laugh, but once Kate glared deeply at him, he found that he stopped immediately.

Kate rested her eyes on the final child, glaring with a, "And Jeremy, no levitating anything or anyone, not even yourself."

Jeremy smiled sheepishly, and accepted it.

"Got it?"

There was a collective sigh and a jumble of mumbles resembling, "got it."

Kate leaned back in her chair, "Good. Now you can go off and play or whatever."

Luke and Jeremy slumped off back to the waterline, kicking at shells, but the carefree atmosphere was gone. They whispered glumly to each other and every once in a while, glared back at Clarisse.

She looked back at them with silent contempt as well, but held her nose high, picked up her towel, and laid it straight in her mother's view of the beach. If those monsters tried anything again, her mother would be there to witness it.

For the next half hour, she continued to lay comfortably in the sun, although shooting looks back at her brothers to catch them plotting some other horrible mess. They looked innocent enough, digging with their hands to form a sand castle with a moat and everything. Yes, they would come up with some wretched scheme soon enough, right when they thought she wasn't listening...

A gust of wind blew suddenly through the beach, tossing Clarisse's hair up. It was a gust undeniably from a speedster. She turned her head and squinting, still pretending to be asleep or not paying attention.

"A message for you, Mr. Watson," the speedster withdrew a folded white paper from his bright red jacket, and wiped the sweat off his forehead with his baseball cap.

Adam blinked, pushing himself awkwardly off the ground with another yawn. He took the letter, which made two beeps of confirmation as it recognized his fingerprints. He muttered something of a thanks to the messenger, who nodded off and was gone in another flash of red.

"Who's that from?" Kate asked as he read, moving his eyes back and forth swiftly down the page. At a certain point, he laughed, then continued to smile and mouth some words slightly as he read. By the time he finished and sighed with a roll of the eyes, he folded up the letter four times, and threw it into the sand in front of him. The chemicals within the letter reacted, and it burst into a flame, being soon reduced to ashes, which were gone in the breeze.

Kate asked again with more impatience, "Well, who's it from?"

Clarisse's father seemed indifferent to respond. He shook the sand from her hair and said, "Nothing really to worry about. It was from Elizabeth. Said her family knows that I'm alive and are attempting to find me." He smirked a little bit, laughing a little.

Clarisse's mother slapped him across the face. "Don't you be so confident! What if the government slips? What they break through the crypto-dissimulation and they find us? What if when they do catch you, you aren't saved by your time-traveling great-granddaughter?"

He rubbed his cheek, not opposing the action at all. "It won't happen again. I'll admit, last time I was foolish and careless, but believe me, Kate, it won't happen again."

Kate leaned back into her chair holding her head, murmuring "This is it. You're going to kill us all just because you're a foolish, selfish bastard."

"Believe me, Kate," he leaned over to her, and lowered his voice to something so soft that Clarisse couldn't hear.

"I've got it," Adam leaned back into his tanning position. "Just trust me, I've got things up my sleeve that you don't even know about. Nothing bad will happen, Kate. Nothing."

There was such a long and silent pause that Clarisse controlled her breathing to listen better. Her mother turned to her side, muttering what Clarisse swore she heard as:

"You're not even wearing sleeves."


	3. The Carrot Cake

**Chapter Three: The Carrot Cake**

Elizabeth and Samson were hungry and cold and tired that was the end of it. Now, as they were huddled sitting on a rock, trying to keep warm with the animal hide coat, trousers, and linen dress that they had, they whispered cautiously about their next choice of action. To make a fire to cook an animal would be a butterfly massacre in terms of ruining the future, not to mention that neither of them really knew how to make a fire and kill and animal, anyway.

As such were the conditions after four days in a place somewhere around Chicago, although this was 1842 when the city of Chicago was not a city at all and the surrounding areas were just miles and miles of forest.

Elizabeth and Samson did not like this. They were not "woodsy" people. They stayed in glass skyscrapers and slept on scientifically engineered mattresses that kept their spine aligned. Now, they just knew that they were hungry and that they really wanted that ten thousand euro bonus. This bonus was offered to any of the agents who could catch one particularly elusive target. Elizabeth and Samson already had a lead since they both knew what he looked like. To abandon the mission now would be to abandon the one thousand euro bet with their colleagues that this mission would be the one. This time, they would get him.

Things didn't look good and they knew that it was stupid of them to count on being so successful in such a time. Cities were much better places to visit in the past since there was a lot of people that would just give you an odd glance then think nothing of it. In the woods, when you met a person, they remembered you, and talked about you, and that sort of publicity was not very desirable for a time traveler.

"G'morning?"

The two of them jumped, turning to see what was behind them. Samson blinked and the woman froze. However, woman was not the best term as old woman was. Indeed, she was very old with wrinkles down her bony face, which was the only thing exposed in the air. Her hair was snow white, matching her gloves and boots, but was dressed with a dark navy sort of bonnet that matched her dress and cloak. All and all, she looked like a regal woman that could have easily been quite beautiful in her youth, but looked upon the two with contempt.

"What do you suppose? Put it off as ghosts?" Elizabeth stood, always sorry for all the people that would tell stories that they really did see these people, even though they were gone in the next moment.

Samson grimaced. "Better not," is all he said.

"Why not? We'd better go anyway; we've been here long enough," she raised an eyebrow at him, rubbing her arms.

"Well, let's ask her if he's seen a guy..."

Elizabeth grinded her teeth. "Let's not," she replied. "That would be what one would call, 'stupid.'"

"C'mon, Liz! We can act all ghostly, and ask her, and if she hasn't, we'll disappear. But if she has, then we've got 'im and that bonus. It's worth a try, ain't it?" Samson pouted. "Oh please, Izzy Lizzy?"

She sighed, pursing her lips. She glanced at Samson coldly, then blinked.

The old woman was reanimated, and she gave each of them curious looks. "What are you two doing on my land?" she scowled.

It gave the two shivers. Samson replied, taking his raccoon fur hat off to his heart, "Excuse me Ma'm, but no one told us this been you land, Ma'am. We're ac'tly looking for a man, perhaps you've seen him? Youn'-looking, 'bout thirty-five, forty. Not real short, but real skinny-like. Black hair too, the blackest you've ever seen."

"No, I haven't seen anyone of that nature. In fact, I haven't seen anyone at all for a four days, now. Perhaps your man went missing with my grandson. I'm not sure he left on purpose; I did say I was making carrot cake, and he always comes home early for that." The old woman now looked sort of mellow, and a fit of worry weaved into her frown and wrinkles.

"Has no one eaten your carrot cake, Ma'am?"

Elizabeth stopped time and whacked Samson in the arm. "What are you trying to do, get us sacked?" she demanded.

Samson frowned playfully, but continued, "Listen, I'm hungry and we need to eat if we've going to stay here any longer. Might as well bunk up in some lady's house."

"We're not going to stay!" shouted Elizabeth, which would have made crows fly if they could move. "We're going to go back, accept our failure, and get the ten thousand the next mission, right when we're sure the target's still in the time period!"

"Don't be ridiculous! Of course he's here! 'Member what Aifric said when she was tracking him? Stayed ten days in 1692, ten _days_ before she got a glimpse of him, which is when he left. Never leaves until we catch up to him, Liz. Never. He's still around here, somewhere. Whatcha' scared for, Liz? Scared to take a little risk for a big reward?"

Elizabeth couldn't express how ridiculous and greedy Samson was, because right then, he blinked, and the old woman said:

"No one at all, and it'll spoil pretty soon." She looked humble now, although her better sense seemed to fight with her. "You're welcome to come to my home and rest for some time if you'd want. I wouldn't mind the company."

Elizabeth really couldn't resist. Her stomach was growling and her heart was yearning for those ten thousand Euros even though she knew it was awfully greedy of her. The wind was blowing too, and perhaps if they could find a place to stay until the sun warmed the place up a bit, perhaps they could have enough spirit to catch this man once and for all.

* * *

The old woman, Mrs. Luther, as she turned out to be, had a nice cabin in the middle of the woods. There was an coal stove in the middle that warmed the house pretty nicely, a pine table with a few handmade chairs, and a single bed with a bear skin as a blanket, with all the other sort of books and pictures that made a home nicely decorated. Elizabeth and Samson didn't find themselves particularly comfortable there, but it was a nice change from the cruel outdoors.

"Here you are. Would you like any tea? Coffee?" Mrs. Luther put a plate of carrot cake in front of both Elizabeth and Samson at the table, despite their protests. She looked about eighty years old and although she didn't walk as such, she probably shouldn't be living alone without her grandson to help her. Nevertheless, they couldn't help but to get comfortable and ask for some coffee.

The carrot cake was simply splendid. Elizabeth related it closely to any store-bought cake that she had tasted, but Samson described colourfully his days as a little boy at his "Grammy's," just waiting for that carrot cake every autumn. They spoke small talk, but surprisingly Samson did a great job of complimenting Mrs. Luther on anything he could think of and steer clear away from any questioning of their lives.

Mrs. Luther seemed to have a simple life, but she was reluctant to speak of it as well. She had a husband, a long time ago, it seemed, and a son too, but then the husband died tragically that she did not speak of much. Her son lived with her and took a wife. They only had one son, and both of them died a few years ago from pneumonia. Now it was only her and Thomas, her grandson.

It was nearly midday and the sun shone so warmly that Mrs. Luther had turned off her coal stove. The heat was disrupted, however, when the door opened quite suddenly.

"Thomas!" Mrs. Luther gasped, shuffling towards the man. "Where have you been?"

The man, however, with his rifle in one hand and a fox skin in the other, was looking very confused at the two guests, who were looking with their mouths wide open at him. "Who--"

Adam stopped with his mouth halfway open.

He didn't stop because his words were caught nor because he figured out who the guests were. He stopped simply because time stopped, and everything was still. Elizabeth and Samson exchanged looks, signalling that neither were the ones who had blinked.

"You two!"

Their target, separate man with dark hair appeared suddenly, leaning in the chair at the other end of the table. He looked irritated, and his arms were crossed casually. He frowned. "No, don't you talk!" He held up his hand and closed his fingers together. "I'll talk for you."

Elizabeth and Samson, however, couldn't speak regardless, because once he closed his fingers, their jaws went up and as much as they tried, their mouths just wouldn't open.

"Yes, that is Adam... well, you know as Joseph Allen," the man spoke referring to the man at the door, although neither of them said anything. "And yes, I am a mimic. Yes, I do exist, and yes, I am reading your mind. I'm sure you've heard of me?" He paused, licking his lips. "No? In that case, let me introduce myself. The name's Petrelli. It's very nice to meet you, too. But, I'm afraid you can't know that."

Elizabeth and Samson felt their heads go involuntarily forward so that Petrelli could touch them. He did, and once he leaned back, they blinked a few times, looking at each other and the room. Then, they tried to speak again, and were surprised to find that they couldn't.

"_I shouldn't follow this man_," he was speaking, although when Elizabeth and Samson heard it, it was like it was the only thing that existed. It was hard and it was a solid voice that sat in their brain and they didn't question the thought. They merely followed it. "_This man is not worth any of my trouble. In fact, I'm making more footprints in the past than he is while trying to follow him. He isn't doing any harm, just merely observing. Researching. I should just go back home and tell everyone else at the Temporal Corps what I think._"

Elizabeth and Samson nodded readily, completely accepting this. They couldn't bring themselves up to fight it.

"I should go..." Petrelli repeated, raising an eyebrow.

The two nodded again. They sat and they nodded.

The man continued, with an expecting look, "Now..."

They both took a deep breath and blinked. The two chairs were empty.

Peter Petrelli leaned back in his chair again. He took one cup half full of coffee, and drank it with a sigh.

* * *

**A/N:** Whaat? A cannon character that's not Adam? How strange!

Mind that Peter acts a lot less whiny and pathetic that he is in the show. I believe this was written before he lost his powers and was all set up to be the next messiah or something.

Hey, if you're reading, mind dropping a review? Are you enjoying it? Like? Dislike? Wowed by how far I've taken this off cannon?


	4. Jeremy

**Chapter Four: Jeremy**

The wind blew and the birds chirped and the entire field was lit so brightly with a streak of red fire that flew in a circle around the field, then crashed into the ground with a thunderous rumble that shook the hundreds of people gathered around.

One side of the field with a ear-splitting roar as another point for Pui Ching Academy was added to the scoreboard.

Jeremy, in general, did not like Panoball. He did not like how ominous the playing field was. The field, was like a pit, that of Rome's Coliseum with hills sloping down towards it on the long side. The actual playing field stretched about a kilometre at it longest side, and half that across the middle.

He furthermore did not like how easy the game was to understand, but dangerous to play.

The rules of Panoball were quite simple. There were three balls, about the size of a head, made fully of rubber that were thrown into the middle. There were a maximum of ten players for each of the two teams that were allowed on the field at a time. At either end of the playing field, there were two white lines. If you got a ball across your line, you scored a point. The team with the most points at the end of an hour of game time won the game.

It really was quite simple. Do everything that you can to get the ball across the line.

The reality of it was not that simple.

Panoball is a word of two parts, the first being "pan-" coming from the Greek root meaning "all," and the game was just that. Anyone with any ability (with some few exceptions) could play Panoball, and the idea of the game was to use your ability to your team's advantage.

Jeremy watched with a bored face as one girl transformed a rubber ball to ice, skating down through the field before Pui Ching's star player breathed a flame all down her path so that the girl tripped and got some nasty burns that were quickly healed by a passing nurse. Pui Ching failed however, by another player who switched the balls to iron, and a magnetic field that attracted all three of the balls to the opposite side of the field. The boy who was creating this field, suddenly bent down and held his ears however, while another player smirked playfully at him, but didn't notice the... (and so on).

The effect of this was phenomenal, making Panoball the most exciting and popular game to come post-Year Zero. Nearly every school in the world played some form of it, although after the Dissociation Movement of 2076, people lived with and went to school with and formed teams with people with the same abilities. That just ruined the whole point of it. The point of making the best team was having a team with a whole range of abilities that could be used together in creative ways to help win.

The countries that did support large multi-ability communities created their own league for secondary school, university, and eventually college divisions. Unfortunately, Jeremy attended Gerard Clifford Academy, a place that had some serious tradition for the game.

His ears and eyes perked up, however, once the magnetokinetic from Gerard Clifford Academy was taken out for recovery and a girl- no, young lady was put in. She was abnormally perfect, with long and soft dark hair, a kind face, and a smooth walk that was almost a float. She walked slowly through the field, swerving something was coming at her, and arrived at a spot exactly as it was thrown in the air from a Pui Ching player trying not to get pummelled. She caught it with no difficulty, placed it under her arm, and actually whistled as she walked back to the goal, avoiding everyone that went for her with a simple sidestep or something similar.

"Are you taking notes, or are you just going to drool at Valeria all day?" asked Ruby, the girl on the grass sitting next to Jeremy. She had her own notepad, but took this moment to stare at him staring at her.

Jeremy blinked, trying to find what to say, but he really wanted to know how the game was going at that point, and watched Valeria stroll down the middle of the field. "She's just- just... can't I just appreciate her? Her- her body is like a sculpture. She's a piece of art, she is. Absolutely breathtakingly beautiful."

"And a breathtaking bitch," said Ruby. "You know, she hasn't gotten any real friends other than the ones who worship her. She's the meanest, most sour, cocky, self-centered person I have ever met in my entire life."

Jeremy continued to watch, nodding to whatever his partner said.

"Listen! Jeremy, listen!" She shook his shoulder.

He had to tear his eyes from the game, but he tried to look at Ruby and concentrate on what she was saying. It was hopeless, though, and within a few seconds, his eyes were back at the girl again.

"Jeremy, listen to me!" Ruby grabbed him, taking both hands on either side of his face to hold him still, although within a few moments of this, she soon felt awkward with it, and dropped the hands. Instead, she looked him straight in the eyes. "You want to make senior editor by sixth year, don't you? We need to focus and get this story. It doesn't matter if Panoball is the most inhumane sport in the entire universe. We still need to cover it in a light that everyone will enjoy, okay?"

Jeremy's head had gravitated towards the game again, and he gave a little nod while the pen next to him floated and wrote illegible words. Ruby gave up, hugged her knees, and watched the game again.

"You do know she wouldn't date anyone like you? She hasn't dated anyone without at least fifteen gifted ancestors, with the exception of Harris Jones, who's got fourteen, but two great-grandparents and a grandmother that were part of the original WTI," Ruby was saying.

"Yeah," Jeremy replied stiffly. "And what am I? A run-of-the-mill eight who wouldn't even be in this school if my Mommy didn't teach here. And even she wouldn't be here if they could find anyone else to teach Classic French. Yeah, I've heard it before."

In reality, Jeremy was a sixth generation, as the effect of having an abnormally old father, but that was all in the package of secrets that were told to no one, not even the exception of a good friend like Ruby. What he'd like to do is punch Harris Jones in the face, screaming to the whole school saying, _Know what? Screw your family line! _My_ father ruled the world while all of your grandparents waited on him and his ass. Yeah, I said it. What you gonna do 'bout it?_

Jeremy was never very good at acting gangster. That was more of his brother's line of work.

"Hey, isn't that your brother?" asked Ruby, squinting and pointing at the sidelines.

After single-handedly scoring two points, Valeria was taken out with the coach's intention of saving her until the heat of the game. She sat on the bench like a queen, with her hands folded and ankles crossed at the ground. Luke crossed around the back of the bench, looking as longingly at the girl as Jeremy did. At least, he had the better view of the two, and was taking advantage of it.

Luke was always the athletic one, even despite his lack of a physical ability. Had this been a team of _Homo sapiens_, he would surely be the star player, but since making people forget or remember things in the middle of a Panoball game was not that useful, he was a benchwarmer. At least, Jeremy suggested, he made the team. Luke always talked about how much the coach talked about having a flyer on the team, and how much he thought Jeremy should join the team to just to shut him up. Conversely, Jeremy was never that into sports and preferred activities like journalism instead.

At the moment, however, he was having second doubts. Luke was going around the front of the bench now. He spoke some words to Valeria, and it seemed like... it seemed like she was laughing!

But then, she brought her hands on to her knees in a sickly flirt and Luke sat on the bench next to her, still talking.

Jeremy fumed. He grabbed the binoculars, watching every movement, every expression, every movement that Luke and Valeria made. Luke talked and pointed, being social and minding the players basically trying to kill each other on the field. She just laughed, nodding, and agreeing.

"I can't tell what they're..." he muttered. "Hey Andy!" he called up to a party of friends down the hill. "Andy! Hey Andy!" Jeremy yelled over the crowds.

A confused young man amongst his hooting friends looked behind him. "Yeah? What?" Andy yelled back.

Jeremy cupped his hands and called over the cheering of another point, "What's Luke and Valeria talking- Luke and Valeria! Them, over... over there! What are they talking about?"

Andy turned back around for a moment, while Jeremy waited impatiently. Eventually, he returned with, "She's saying he's a real nice guy! Real funny!"

Jeremy put his binoculars back up, locating the pair. This was an emergency. He gasped when Luke pulled the typical yawn and arm around Valeria's back, and then--

She stood up and slapped him. She started yelling some things that Jeremy could obviously not hear and walked over to the other side of the bench. Luke tried to look cool, running his fingers through his hair and went to cheer his team on.

"Did you see that?" Ruby was doubled over laughing. "Classic!"

Jeremy was on the ground, as well, laughing so hard that he cried. As much as he loved his brother, he would be honest to say that he deserved it.

They laughed and rolled and rolled and laughed until Ruby said they might as well die from laughter right then and there. She said, if she died from laughter at a Panoball game, right there with him, she would be absolutely and perfectly happy. He said he didn't believe her, and missed the hint entirely.

* * *

**A/N: **So I asked myself, what would people play as sports in school? They can't do things like football and track. Of course, the strongmen and the speedsters would beat everyone. It wouldn't be fair.

So this is what I came up with. I believe I was in the car, riding to the mall. And I tried to make it as much like a modern American football game as possible, with all the school spirit, and social scenes with a lack of interest for the actual game. Yeah.


	5. The Sun Room

**Chapter Five: The Sun Room**

Elizabeth did something she hated to do, but did often. She stomped on the floor and acted very childish.

"Colonel, you need to listen to me! Please!"

The colonel, who had been walking away, put on a professional scowl and turned on his heel. "You have twenty seconds to explain, and believe that I will find every way to try and understand you, Miss..." He found he forgot her name, but his status and disposition led such things to be ignored.

"I do believe, Colonel," she started, breathing deeply and sincerely as the selection and nature of her words could very well break her career. "That tracking this target-- the target with the ten thousand euro price tag-- is completely useless."

The colonel did not look pleased. "And you suggest we give up?"

Elizabeth breathed deeply again. "The facts are that this man has slipped from a total of twelve missions from a variety of agents, all of which barely had a glimpse of him. He has alluded us, and in the process, we ourselves have slipped, making far too much trouble in the past. I'm thinking... Colonel... that the target is more trouble than he's worth."

Staring with a confused expression, the colonel seemed to scowl even more deeply, even more than what Elizabeth thought possible. He leaned in, seeming to inspect her eyebrows, but Elizabeth sort of leaned back in a way to let the colonel know that he was being creepy.

In a sudden, frightening sort of way, he grabbed her hand. They were, instead, in a fashionable sort of sitting room with cubic sofas and a ominously glassy marble floor.

"I see the Corps has enough to courtesy to at least knock."

This came from a man with wide frame glasses and thick wiry hair. He was wearing a deep blue sweater and had a book open in his hands. Immediately, by his home full of books and early century feng shui, it seemed to Elizabeth that this man was some kind of... classic, stuck-up, cappuccino-drinking geek.

The colonel responded with, "Mr. Johnson, you owe me a favour," and guided Elizabeth toward him.

The man seemed to understand, so he put on a grimace, took off his glasses and stepped in front of the young woman. He looked into her eyes, and although Elizabeth always thought this was creepy, looked into his just to show she could. They were either gray or green, but hard to tell in the dramatically artsy lighting.

"She's a employee of mine, and went to track down someone a few hours ago. She hasn't been the same since, a complete change of personality over the whole case. You only need to find out why," said the colonel.

Mr. Johnson did something even creepier, alarming Elizabeth. He placed his left hand on her head, with his thumb at the top of her forehead and fingers through her hair. She raised an eyebrow at him, breaking the gaze she had. He, instead, gazed at her forehead, and seemed to be in a different place completely.

It suddenly occurred to Elizabeth that the man might be tapping into her memory, although she had told Colonel that she only remembered seeing a glance of the target before having to leave Mrs. Luther and the carrot cake. No? Then perhaps... she really didn't know, although she was freaked out that this guy placed a thumb on her forehead. It would have to be something of knowing everything she had done in her past, hadn't it?

The man started to smirk, almost laugh as if watching a sitcom, but he didn't speak.

Elizabeth's eyes widened. Well, of course, he'd be able to see everything she's ever done, including her aiding Mr. Allen, being good friends with Kate and Clarisse and the twins while still pretending to be an Individualist to her mother and father, vowing to go against Joseph Allen and all of his surviving ideals. Her heart started to pump through her ears and panic spread through every inch of her body.

"She's had her memory erased," Mr. Johnson said suddenly, dropping his hand to his side and looking behind her, to the colonel, "and mind reconfigured. It seems the man they were tracking isn't just a time traveler at all. Rather, the legend Peter Petrelli himself. She's right too. Not doing anything with time, merely observing. More trouble than he's worth."

The colonel looked like he's just been insulted. "'More trouble than he's worth?' Listen here, is a robber let go after he robs a bank twelve times without being caught? Perhaps a murderer commits such perfect crimes that the police never catches him, no matter how hard they try? Are they, the criminals, just waived of their crimes just because they're 'more trouble than they're worth?' It doesn't matter how many abilities this Petrelli has, nor how well he can clean up after himself. He has time traveled, and that is a crime punishable by death."

Elizabeth tried to look with a blank face, although her new opinions screamed that everything the colonel was saying was wrong.

Mr. Johnson, however, licked his lips and responded with, "Colonel, you eat your heart out trying to find Peter Petrelli. Like I said, he's a legend, in the traditional sense. Almost a myth. Just don't come crying back to me when you need a favour. Mine's been done."

He craned his head to face Elizabeth, looking into her eyes again. His eyes weren't full of contempt or amusement however, but full of gratitude. He smiled at her, sincerely.

The colonel, with a unpleased grunt, grabbed her hand, and they left.

* * *

"So you're back to clarinets again?"

"It's an oboe. Look, does this even look like a clarinet?"

Jeremy judged if Clarisse was asking a serious question. What she held in her hands was this long black tube with lots of keys, which was a clarinet for as far as he knew.

They were in the sun room, a cute little quarter of the house lined completely with windows so that even in the late autumn, as it was now, the room would warm up through the day and provide a lovely natural view of the sun sinking down the horizon.

After a few moments, Clarisse responded with, "I haven't even touched a clarinet since I was seven. Thought I'd expand my horizons to double-reeded instruments. Listen, I learned the scale today."

She put the oboe to her lips, starting with a chromatic scale, then playing the classical piece on her music stand. It started out slow and sweet, but the rhythms became more complex with a faster, more intricate style.

Once she finished, Jeremy screwed his face over and responded with a, "it sounds... different?"

"Yes..."

"... Different than a clarinet?"

Clarisse gave up, sighing. How sad it was to be the only musician in a family. That is, her mother sang to the radio, and her father knew something of the guitar and violin, but could only remember and play a few songs of his time.

"Hey," said Jeremy, already changing the subject by adjusting his tie in a nearby mirror, "mind not to tell Dad that I'm borrowing his suit if he mentions it? I know he shouldn't, since it's from the back of his closet, but still..."

His sister titled her head, squinting a bit while she questioned herself. Jeremy was looking sharp, his blonde hair wet and combed back, his face free from razor burn, and a blue shirt under an tan blazer with trousers to match.

"You're looking smart," Clarisse said, dropping her hostility for once. It excited her to see her brother in such a state. She smiled and asked him, "Going anywhere special with anyone special? Anyone that I would know?"

Jeremy turned from the mirror, not noticing his sister's smile fade, as he responded with, "Yeah, you know Kassy Madden? It's nearly our two week anniversary.

"But the dressing up is for Hector's party. He's doing a century theme, and I know what you're thinking. I know you're thinking that this isn't 1990s, but you're wrong. Some people from the 1990s dressed like this, but were only about ten years ahead of their time. Plus, don't I look authentic?"

He did look authentic. He looked like the suit was made for him, fitted by a professional tailor. His hair made him look more mature and his shoes gave him an extra half inch of height that made him look undeniably like a man, not a young man, nor a boy. In fact, he didn't really look like himself. He looked much older than himself.

Clarisse only grimaced at him, thinking it would be a great moment to say how great he looked and get all touchy-feely, but she wasn't that kind of sister and Jeremy knew that, being that kind of brother. She simply said, "Yeah, you look um... ace..."

"Yeah, I know, it's pretty lame." He pulled back his sleeve, reading his watch. "Anyway, I should be heading out. Kassy'll take forever to leave her place. And um. Right."

Jeremy took a moment to collect himself, taking a deep breath and a close of the eyes. He seemed tired. Once he opened them, it happened.

Clarisse noticed, too. She had been looking through one of the windows that the sun room held, right at the horizon of warm oranges that the sun was giving off, at the figures of black shadows squatted amongst the bushes. She thought it was odd, and had no time to think of anything else.

The first thing she noticed was that the window shattered, and made that alarming sound of a breaking window to do with it. She jumped, eyes still on the two figures that were now running out of the bushes and toward the horizon. She saw the long gun in the one's hands, and she knew they had broken the window. She thought and knew she could hit one of them if she had a gun of her own, and there was a gun just in the other room, if she'd run now, she'd-- During all of these thoughts which seemed to come in a rush, she happened to look at the room, and see the drops of blood upon the far wall.

Her brother was still standing however. His eyes were still open, a little wide and surprised, and mouth slightly open, but he was completely still, as if frozen by the sound of the shattered window. Slowly, though in a moment, he seemed to stare toward the wall so much that he leaned forward, and gradually, fell.

Clarisse couldn't scream... it couldn't happen, even if she tried. She placed her hands over her mouth and stared at her brother's body with terrified eyes. She was petrified stiff.

Her brother sprawled was on the floor now, faced towards the ground. At the nape of his neck, there was a hole, from the hole, a mass of deep red, which seeped down into the carpet.

"Hey, what's going on? I heard--" Luke rubbed his eyes, yawning as he entered the sun room. He stopped though, frozen, and stared.

Clarisse grabbed for a phone. She shook, trembled as she dialed for an ambulance, and found herself blubbering into the phone. The receptionist couldn't understand her however, until she was screaming into it, weeping in such a way that she couldn't control herself. She couldn't help thinking what she was thinking, mostly because what she was thinking was absolutely true.

* * *

**A/N:** So Clarisse's ability is Accuracy, or Marksmanship, and I always try to find a use for that rather than being a sniper. So I thought a bit, and I suppose playing music requires the same sort of accuracy, counting and predicting, and hitting the right notes at the right time. Um, right?

Also, last night's episode? Abosolute WIN. No doubt about it, the best of the season. Wow. Just. Wow. Everything was just perfect. Epic. Amazing. And they took a hell of their time to get there, but. Well, good.

Who wrote/directed this one? I need to kiss them.

And also, I realized that Arthur is a lot like Adam from my Part Two. Just a bazillion times less sexy and awesome.


	6. Luke

**Chapter Six: Luke**

My brother is dead.

Luke sat in the hospital hallway, knees pulled up to his chest in a lime green plastic chair. He didn't need to be in the hospital room. He saw enough of his brother in his mind, imprinted there like the phrase that accompanied it. The nurses had closed his brother's eyes and wiped the blood from the back of his neck, but no matter how presentable he looked, he was indubitably dead, ever since the bullet went through his head. His face was pale and set like a stone, and he wasn't anyone anymore. Luke remembered the word to be 'corpse.'

My brother is dead.

He stared at the wall, in front of him, and repeated the phrase in his head. He repeated it over, and over, staring at the wall. He did it so that he would believe it, but it didn't work at all. He repeated it, though, trying until it just became words. After that, it became sounds, then noise. My brother is dead. My brother is dead.

"Let me through! Please, my son!"

Luke turned his head slightly toward one end of the hall. His mother had appeared, and she was running down the hall to the hospital room. His eyes followed as she rushed past him, into his brother's room.

His father had appeared there with her, and followed her into the room. He was the one that stood over her with a hand on her back as she bawled, taking the body into her arms. Luke looked over his shoulder into the window, seeing her yell and scream and squeeze the body tight. He couldn't see his father's expression, but he was in contrast, quite still, with a expression that he didn't know what to think.

My brother is dead. My brother is dead.

He set his head between his knees and held it. How could this happen? Why? Just so random and completely out of the blue? My brother is dead. My brother has been killed. He imagined his mother asking the very same questions in the hospital room, but the doors had some good use of a sound barrier. He also imagined his sister with her head in her hands, trying to explain, but finding herself unable to.

Luke felt... Well, it was a weird thing. He didn't feel sadness, or anger for the people who had killed them. He didn't feel grief or surprise that just ten minutes ago, his brother had been alive. He didn't even feel nothing. He felt void. He stared, and repeated the phrase while his mouth seemed to twitch with the words.

His Aunt Elizabeth appeared on her own in the next moment, staring into the window of the hospital room. She was quite still, and her face was sympathetic and grim. After that moment, however, she wiped her eyes and looked toward the teenager rocking himself in the hallway.

"Hey, Luke. Alright?" she asked of him.

He didn't respond, but slowly turned his head to stare at the wall again.

The door opened briefly, letting a moment of his mother's cries to be heard until it closed again.

"I'm sorry. Truly and deeply sorry." It was Elizabeth speaking this.

His father spoke, "How did you know? We've only found out a few minutes ago and even Clarisse can't say anything..." His voice was softer and softer until it finally dropped.

There was silence. It seemed to be the theme of the day.

"I should have seen it coming. My mum's been acting funny all week."

Silence.

Luke jumped. The chair next to him was picked up and slammed into the wall in a loud bang while some obscene words were yelled. When he looked up, his father had his head leaned in against the wall with his arms wrapped around it. Luke listened in closely, but his father was silent and still, except for his fingers, which periodically squeezed tufts of his hair.

"They didn't mean to kill Jeremy," Elizabeth continued. "They didn't know you had a son."

Adam was still holding his head, leaning against the wall. "Yeah, a shot to the head'll do it. Right at the nape of the neck, straight through to the mesothalamus. That's the way to kill a man who can't die."

"I'm s-sorry," Elizabeth offered again. "If I had known--"

"Don't be sorry," said Adam. "I've been foolish, far too careless. What do you have to be sorry about? This isn't your fault."

He sighed, taking in a deep breath while Luke turned his attention away from him.

My brother is dead.

Another curse was thrown out as his father pounded the wall with his fist, making another loud bang. Both Luke and Elizabeth jumped.

An awkward silence spread through the hall once again.

The door opened, as inferred by the sudden cries of his mother, but were stopped, signalling the close of the door.

"I can't stand it. I can't stand hearing her." That was Clarisse. Her voice was unstable too, and she wept and gasped, greeting her Aunt Elizabeth. Soon after, her cries were muffled and Luke suspected they must be hugging.

This time, the silence was replaced by Clarisse's cries.

Elizabeth spoke, "You should be tending to your wife. She's devastated."

Luke took a chance to look up to his father, who leaned at the window and stared into the room. His expression was grim, sorrowful and he didn't move to follow Elizabeth's advice. Instead, he stared, quite still with just his chest moving up and down.

Then, he picked himself up, and treaded tentatively to the room. Luke looked over his shoulder, into the window, seeing his father put a hand lightly on his mother's head, who immediately threw herself into his arms and wept into his chest. Luke had never seen such a reaction from his father, such a uncertain look upon his face. Luke couldn't imagine what his father was thinking at this very moment.

Luke turned back to his knees.

My brother is dead, he thought. He's not coming back.

* * *

Athanatos Johnson sat in his living/bedroom, upon his cubic sofabed and groaned at the stacks of empty boxes that filled the room. He figured he would pack up his stuff tonight since he owned so little. The landlord owned his furniture, his appliances, and even his lampshades. All he owned was his measly collection of clothes and his absurdly large collection of books, half of which were stuffed into his closet.

Life, in general, was shit. It had been since he took a chance and paid some guy on the black market a few thousand euros to see that Greek play. The only problem was that the play was in Ancient Greece. After a few seconds of being in 420 BCE, they were busted by the World Temporal Corps.

Because Athan (as he was usually called) continuously begged the Corps to believe that he was merely a civilian taken hostage by a bum terrorist, they felt sorry for such a pathetic man and decided to not execute him after all. They only kept him in debt for letting him live, and that debt was paid off after he told the colonel that the Ferguson girl had been following Peter Petrelli.

A few months after Ancient Greece, Athan was laid off by the newspaper that he had devotedly worked for twenty-some years. In short, they said his book reviews sucked and that they had always sucked, but such few people actually read the book reviews section that it hardly mattered until the layout was changed to put that section ten pages closer to the front. And so, they sacked him.

With no job, Athan had no money. With no money, he couldn't afford the rent, and was therefore being evicted from his flat. He was being thrown out on the street. Thirty years ago, he was in Cambridge University, a promising scholar in the subject of Historical Literature. Now, he was jobless and homeless.

Athan pushed himself up with great willpower and dragged himself to his closet. Upon opening it, three books felt out from a tall stack in the front. He sat down on the floor with a great sigh, and glanced over the titles: _Lost in Self-Confidence_, _The Hand-Carry_, and _Madame Schulde_.

"Oh, Madame Schulde," he almost laughed in this grim time, flipping through it. Oh, what a terrible book you are, how certifiably insane your publisher must have been. What an painfully horrendous book you were to read, back in those good old University days. Would I have read you at all if my girlfriend's... well, ex-girlfriends mother hadn't offered you to me? Of course not. Would I have kept you if I didn't think I could use you for firewood? No, don't be so silly. But, what curious questions you opened to my naive mind. Back then, I thought it was possible that our future was part of our past.

He frowned.

He remembered the Corps agent's very interesting past, of her as a teenager going into a 18th century house with. She was being guided by a 'Miss Bailey,' who seemed awfully familiar to Athan, although the Joseph Allen there seemed infinitely more familiar. So Joseph Allen hadn't died, but became lost in time instead, he was now sure of that. So, the people of the future (or rather, now the present) had existed in the past, and the story of Madame Schulde was completely plausible.

In fact...

Athan flipped through the book, jogging his memory about the story. It was about some poor lady from the 21st century stuck in an Revolutionary French bakery. Didn't that Ferguson go into an 18th century bakery, too? And wasn't there a woman and an unenthusiastic man, which she teleported back to the present?

This was strange. Was it even possible that Madame Schulde was a true story about this Miss Bailey?

While he packed his books into his boxes, he thought upon this. Yes, completely plausible. Actually, it seemed to fit. Perfectly. Well, a little too perfectly. God, why do I have so many books. This is too much. Why do I have to have a historical epiphany the day before I have to move out? I need... I need a break.

Athan sipped his Earl Grey and flipped open the newspaper, a reputable one instead of the one that laid him off. Individualists in Parliament raising taxes for the upper class? Again? Typical bastards. Old news. He flipped past to the local news, which were usually filled with happy stories about little children having bake sales for charity.

"Academy Student Dies in Car Accident," Athan read with a scowl. "Jeremy Watson, a sixth year student from Gerard Clifford Academy, was killed last evening in a car accident while driving to the party of a friend."

Well, that sucked. Even more so than being evicted. He read on, about the poor kid and how smart he was and how beloved he was by his classmates. The article was accompanied by a picture of the car, which was destroyed to the point that Athan had to look closely to even recognize that it really was a car.

He read on, about the mother, who had a few words to say, and was according to the article, a professor of Classical French at the Academy. Her name was Katherine Watson.

Kate. He knew a Kate once upon a time, in the good old days of the Academy. She was two years his senior, and they knew nothing of each other outside of Debate Club. But, she took German and her name was Kate Bailey.

He could've sworn that his head had just exploded.

* * *

**A/N:** I enjoyed this chapter. And since some people *coughschnubbi* were freaking out, I decided to be nice and post it early.

And as a totally random special feature, Athanatos is greek for "immortal." Coincidence? No, something else...


	7. The Ten Kenshi

**Chapter Seven: The Ten Kenshi**

Here Athan was, standing right on Katherine Bailey/Watson/Schulde's doorstep, and as much as he tried to make a sound, he couldn't find any other way to start to explain himself without seeming completely and entirely out of his goddamn mind.

Kate quickly shut the door.

"Ah! Wait! Mrs.-- Miss-- Madame! This is going to sound completely and entirely mad, but... er... I know who you are; who you really are." Athan pressed himself to the door. It was cold, and he knocked and shouted into it.

She didn't open the door, but her voice could still be heard, "Please, will you please just leave us alone? I understand that you want to kill h-him, but do you have to cause us so much pain?"

"Mrs. Watson," he tried on for size. "Please, it's Athan-- Athan Johnson from primary school. Do you remember?" For a moment, he feared that his epiphany had been completely and totally wrong. Perhaps he shouldn't have come at all. Damn.

There was a pause, but an equally shaken voice replied, "I don't know any Athan J-Johnson. I was home-schooled."

"No, damn it! No!" Athan pounded the door. "Look, Mrs. Watson, Miss Bailey, Madame Schulde, whoever you are! It's Athanatos Johnson! Look-" He reached into his pocket to put on his glasses, but the door in front of him was suddenly opened, and he was pulled inside.

"Don't you d-dare," Kate held him by the collar, and wiped her red eyes with her sleeve. "Don't you dare speak of such things outside my home. You never know who could be listening."

Athan put up his hands. He gave a sigh of relief when she dropped her hand and turned away from him, wiping her nose on a long black sleeve. "I'm sorry," he swallowed. "But er, Katherine Bailey? Is it really you?"

She seemed to hold the same sort of features that she always had, a small nose and bony hands. However, her trademark blonde hair had been cut to medium length. Nothing else could be fairly judged since it looked as if she had been crying for days and was running out of black clothes. She nodded to the question bitterly.

"So you're some big and rich author now. What are you doing here?" said Kate, her voice getting calmer.

Athan shrugged painfully. He chose to respond with, "So you're married to Joseph Allen, now."

She stopped, looking cross, then laughed a little. "Things change."

"Ah, what was the one that I always loved? Modern London's Very Own Nero. Classic. Who would've thought you'd marry the very man you thought to be the Antichrist?"

"And you? Coming here, knowing all of this, plus that Madame Schulde business?" Kate blinked. She wiped her nose a final time and guided him off from the wall. "Won't you sit and have a drink?"

* * *

Anthanatos found the house blend of Chai to be surprisingly pleasant, while Kate sat down in the lounge with a bottle of scotch.

"Hard times? I didn't mean to come so soon after the accident," said Athan.

"It was hardly an accident," said Kate, and went on to explain how they had to hide the truth from the public for obvious reasons, but as Jeremy was a public student, it would be suspicious to hide everything. She also told of Clarisse and Luke, her two other children that were taking their lessons at home, where the government provided a few security guards.

Kate sipped her drink, saying, "We can't do this forever. We can't even trust the government for so long. The Individualists are starting to realize that Joseph's slipping the Kimball advice, and with the Primist Party shrinking so rapidly, we'll be alone, soon. But you'd be happy about that?"

"No, actually," he put down his cup. "I'm a Primist now, switched shortly after I realized that things haven't been so good since high school, when they were in power. I've been having a tough time for the past few years. I'm nowhere near an author, let alone a successful one. Then again, you would know hardships better than I."

This seemed to be the right time for Athan to tell his side of the story, which was how he knew her side of the story. Kate agreed, saying it was a very peculiar set of coincidental events indeed.

"So, I thought, there must be a reason. God must have tore down my old life and bring me this coincidence for some purpose. Then, I thought," Athan's eyes lit up as he said this, "Joseph Allen is alive. When he died, everything just got worse. I was thinking--"

"Kate, you didn't tell me we were entertaining this afternoon?"

"Prime-- Ah, Mr. Allen!" Athan was flustered, and he did some kind of combination of standing up and bows and lowering of his eyes and whatever else he could think of.

Adam merely blinked as he said cheerfully, "No, it's Anthony Watson, but I often do get mistaken for our late Prime--"

"Joseph, this is Athanatos Johnson, a former schoolmate of mine," Kate interjected without a beat. "He was just telling me of an unusual set of coincidences that led him to learn of my and your adventures for the past thirty years."

With a long sigh, Adam raised an eyebrow at the man. "Really?" He smiled. "Athanatos Johnson?" He tried to keep himself from laughing, but failed miserably. "Dear God, you're not serious, are you?"

Athan nodded with a cringe. "That's what you get with a Greek mother."

Adam cupped his mouth and turned away, shuddering with laughter, until Kate told him to sit down, when he let sort of a snort out. "I'm sorry... that's hil-horrendous! Terrible." He giggled again, saying to himself in a small voice, "Athanatos Johnson..."

After a short moment of silence in which Athan stopped caring what his hero thought, he said, "It's true, I've seen Elizabeth Ferguson's mind while doing a favour for the World Temporal Corps, and I read _Madame Schulde_ a few decades ago. I've only recently put two and two together, and I believe some greater power has led me to you, Mr. Allen."

"So, do you want an autograph or something?" Adam asked, drinking from Kate's glass.

Athan licked his lips and said with great difficulty, "I was perhaps wondering... if you would get into politics again. We need you." His face was sincere and he didn't hold a salesman smile. Instead, it was a grim face, one that made Adam shiver.

"Please, believe me, Mr. Johnson, I've been trying. I have persuaded Kimball into going against her party, making acts in laws to the benefit of people that deserve them, but that can only last for so long until she gets pissed. In fact, just yesterday she threw her coffee at me, told me burn in hell, all of that PMS."

"I'm not talking about being a puppeteer," insisted Athan. He sat up and ignored his tea. "I'm talking about being a symbol; a leader. Not a public one, of course, but I don't know... an object to give the Primist party hope and make them cohesive again."

Adam downed the rest of the scotch, and Kate, annoyed, filled it up again, taking a shot of her own. "Unfortunately," he said, "doing anything like that is out of the question. Now, I don't know if you know this, but there's a group of approximately fifty people whose sole purpose in life is to make sure I'm dead. They've recently found out that I'm not dead, and I'm currently under house arrest while their hunting me down like dogs onto a fox."

"Is that all? You're afraid that they'll kill you?"

Sipping at his glass, Adam made an eye at Athan. "I'm sorry," he asked. "Was that a serious question?"

Kate sighed, "All of us are in danger. They'll go through the entire family just to get to him."

Athan blinked at them, as if the answer was clear. "Well," he said. "Then, we'll help you. If all you need is safety and security, if we provide that, do you think you could return the favour? Help us out in the future, when you are able?"

Adam tried to look noble and aloof, but found himself unable to. "I'm sorry, what are you talking about?"

"If there is an organization aimed to killing you, there should be an organization aimed to protecting you. Without the worry of being shot, you should be able to bring the Primists back to power, and meanwhile make sure the families of those that risked their lives for you would be in power. Correct, Mr. Allen?"

A thin smile spread upon Adam's face like a knife through butter.

"Wait, who would even want to do that?" Kate asked.

* * *

The nine plus Athanatos were seated all within a round table that was located in one of their's basement. They were excited, a bit loud and chatty as they were all good friends there, and the ones who were not were quickly made so. They were all friendly, and a few conversations eventually were made, one talking of politics, one of each other's children, nieces, and nephews, one of the Manchester football game, and one of a serious discussion the chicken-egg paradox.

All conversation ceased once Adam and his family entered the basement.

"Right..." Athanatos stood.

"No, why don't we all introduce ourselves in this awkward sort of place?" one small woman with bright red lips stood, and didn't wait for an answer. "It's a grand pleasure to meet you, Mr. Allen. I'm Callisto Tenniel, Animator." She tapped some nails on the table, and they started to dance like ballerinas. She sat and smiled.

The person to her left blinked, and made some grim expression, stood and said, "Gareth Nehru, Teleport."

One by one, they stood, stating their names and abilities. There was Suzy Tarantino, ESPer, next to her best friend, Julia Clark, Technopath, whose favourite cousin was Mackenzie Scodelario, Hawk (a.k.a. enhanced sight), next to a man she'd just met, Bishen Bettany, Elastic. His good friend from the Academy was Emile Weir, Healer, who was seated next to the attractive Florence Gibbon, No-See, sister of Jonas Gibbon, Self-Liquifier, who completed the ten in all. Some were more willing than others, but they were all up to meeting the late Prime Minister.

"We've all come up with a pact, just for insurance if you'd like to review it please, Mr. Allen," Athanatos slid over a few papers to the man, who picked them up with interest. "They state that we will do everything in our power from keeping you, Kate, and your descendants from psychical or psychological harm, injury, near-death or actual death. In return, you forever do what is in the best interests for the world and us, your most loyal subjects. We will also see to that our children will protect you and your children, and their children, and so on and so forth until the end of days, as long as your promise is kept. How does that sound?"

He reviewed it, three times with some hesitation, and then Kate, Clarisse, and Jeremy reviewed it, finding it fair. Wasn't it just an agreement to save their lives? They signed it neatly at the bottom.

The ten also reviewed the pact a second time, making sure they weren't doing anything they would regret. Wasn't it just an investment for their own future descendants? They signed it neatly at the bottom.

Later during the meeting, they came up with codes and names and symbols that would hold their secrecy. They all agreed that it would be quite fashionable to be named the Ten Kenshi; "kenshi" as in swordsman, not a great "kensei," but something near it. They smiled and they loved it, as much as they loved having a round table.


	8. An Eye for An Eye

**Chapter Eight: The Eye For An Eye**

Luke ran. He ran as fast as could, pumping his lungs for air and going until his legs were mechanical, moving like clockwork.

"Four minutes, forty-eight seconds," called the physical education teacher. "Nice job, boys."

"Hey! Hey, professor! Who was first?" panted the one young man, who had his hands on his knees, bending over. He coughed, wiped his forehead, and stood up.

The teacher watched the other students still running around the track. "By a tenth of a second, Luke."

"Son of a bitch!" the young man laughed. He smiled, coughing again, but lunged for Luke, who played off a grand smile and was chased around the track for one more lap.

By the end, Luke's knees gave out, and he was pummelled into the dust by his friend. He laid and laughed, while the dust was blown away in a moment, and Luke could've swore he heard a "Careful," whispered into his ear. He looked up, expecting to see no one as Florence Gibbon had been his guard for some odd months now. But, Florence wasn't a speedster, she was just invisible. Now, why couldn't anyone tell him fully of what was going on?

"Hey, alright?" his friend called, getting up from the dust a few feet away.

Luke nodded, brushing himself off. This was getting ridiculous. The only people he saw to be mysteriously following him were the Ten, or a person that he later learned to be another one who had joined the Ten, and named themselves proudly as a Kenshi. Yes, his brother had been killed in their very own house, but for the past seven months, absolutely nothing had happened that had threatened his life. The Kenshi said that was because they were doing their job.

He felt sorry to say this, but it was like a cult. It was secretive, with hand signals and symbols spray painted white on the sides of buildings. It was invisible to anyone who didn't know about it, but to people like Luke who recognized the symbols, it was a message board with notes left and right. It seemed that every one of the Ten had their own branch of friends that focused on a different aspect of bringing Joseph Allen back to power, and they were all shockingly enthusiastic about it. Luke didn't quite understand.

"That's it," the physical education teacher called as the last student treaded across the finish line. "Head on in."

The next bell rang. Luke slipped his bookbag over her shoulder and attempted to cross the raging river of people also known as the hallway. It took him nearly five minutes to walk down eight doors to his next class.

"Heya, Luke, see Melbourne last night? Yeah, rough game. Listen, I've been doing terrible in Chem lately. Yeah, there's like a trillion stuff to remem-- Oh thanks man! You're a real lifesaver, yeah?"

"Luke! Hiya Luke. Don't you know you're the cutest-- Oh, I've said already? Well, I was wondering if you could give me a refresher. You know, big Music Theory exam. Luke, you are such a sweetheart! Oh, alright. See you later!"

"So I was thinking, you know how I am. I know Georgina is busy with all her films, but no! Just stop for a second! Check it, every 12th of the month, she goes to Rosaline's Coffee Shop, with sunglasses and all that so that people don't know she's famous, and she sits at the same spot-- How? Oh, I read it online. Listen, Luke, just listen--"

Luke dropped his books at his desk. "No, Wallace! Georgina Harrison doesn't remember you as her lover simply because you never were her lover, and me trying to bring back any of her memories isn't going to change that! Ever! So quit trying, will you?"

Wallace frowned and shrugged, dragging himself back to his seat and muttering something incomprehensible to the photograph of the actress that lived in his pocket.

With a roll of the eyes, Luke plodded into his own seat, and held his head. When he finally opened his eyes at the sound of a second bell, he read the board and let his head fall to the desk. It read, "Exam Today! Clear your desks. Pencil only," with a roughly drawn smiley face.

Pathetic. What a completely pathetic ability. While everyone else reaps the benefits with suddenly remembrance everything if they just visit me before an exam, I can't even help myself. God, I hate Mandarin. Why couldn't I have taken Cantonese? Or Japanese; everyone loves Japanese. Maybe I should've taken my chances on Italian. Maybe, Arabic. Maybe. Damn, I can't even read the directions... they could've at least put that in English. Or even French. I could read that. Wait, why would they put the directions in French? It's a Mandarin exam. That doesn't make any sense. Oh, the numbers are in English. And the multiple choice, they're A, B, C, and--

The classroom door smacked open. "Jesus Christ, Ellen! Turn on your telly!"

Luke's Mandarin teacher looked cross, responding with a "Excuse me? We're testing!"

Whether it was the teacher or the student that telepathically turned on the television was never known to Luke. The televisions were usually reserved for school announcements, and he didn't even know that they could receive normal programming.

The students ignored their exam papers, and their eyes were glued on the television, where the caption below the newscaster was in bold, capital, and white letters.

"-- Minister intended to honour a historical bank in St. Rollox, but within moments of her speech was shot in the back of the head. Shortly after, a banner that was supposed to announce the bank's new status was... was replaced instead with the words, 'an eye for an eye.' Well, we'll be rolling the footage, as that seems to explain this terrible incident much more clearly."

The anchorman swallowed with a painful look, but the screen switched over to the footage, which was silent with the anchorman's words commentating instead.

Luke stared. He gulped. Prime Minister Kimball was making a speech, and seemed completely normal and charismatic as she was. It seemed totally out of the blue that she was to suddenly jolt for a moment, then fall gracefully behind the podium.

The camera shook, and it was clear that in front, the crowds were going crazy. The cameras were flashing like no tomorrow. Then, the banner dropped, displaying in front of the bank's entrance those very words in big, black capital letters, "AN EYE FOR AN EYE." The public at the scene went crazy, and the camera was being shaken so terribly that the it tried to back out of the crowd, but people were running left and right.

"As of yet, investigators have no leads to the assassins," the anchorman continued, "but do believe it was a very carefully planned assassination attempt, as the Prime Minister's security is at the highest consideration. The public present at the ceremony are being investigated individually, although the vast majority of people believe the shot was fired from kilometres afar. At this point, we have-- Oh? Oh God."

The newscaster took off his glasses for a moment, wiping his face. He blinked a few times, put his glasses back on and addressed the screen again.

"I've just received news that Prime Minister Jocelyn Ann Kimball is confirmed dead."

A few students of Luke's class gasped, and a girl held her mouth to stop her cries. The rest of the class blinked at the screen with gaping mouths.

Luke couldn't look at it anymore. A shiver flew down his spine. He held his head, got up from his seat without a word. Only a few students even noticed when he left the classroom. He sat in the nearest janitorial closet that he could find.

"Was it us?" he asked quietly. He held his head.

Florence appeared, and sat down beside him. "She allied with the Fergusons. She was mad at your father and told them where he lived. It's because of her that your brother is dead."

So it was, an eye for an eye. Luke said, "I thought you kept people from dying. I thought you were for peace."

"Oh Lukie Baby, we are for peace. The Individualists were getting sick of her, the annoying little woman. They would've gotten to her before we did." Florence leaned up against the concrete wall, placing a grim smile to the young man. "I bet they're thankful for what we've done. Oh, they'll get to blame it on the terrorists and write it off as a tragedy. Meanwhile, they'll run out of steam. They'll lose their trust."

Tragedy. What was tragic was the irony that Joseph Allen, the first tragedy, would be the one to cause the second. "I know," Luke said, "I know she had to go. I just... I can't believe we killed her."

In a way, he was sort of glad. Someone needed to pay for his brother's death. This would be a blow to the Fergusons' chest. It wasn't just some assassination, not even just some tragedy. It was the premiere. It was the Kenshi's debutante. They had made a grand entrance, indeed.

Luke licked his lips. "Do I still have to take my exam?" he asked.

* * *

**A/N:** Oooh, dark. :P Loved this chapter. Some of them just flow right on to the page.

And last episode of the year tomorrow! You know, I had a dream about a preview saying it would be a 2-hour special and and the NBC guy's voice and everything. Imagine my disappointment when I found out it wasn't. No, just a normal episode, though no doubt it will be have an cliffhanger ending that will leave me screaming.

Oh, the tortures of a Heroes fan.


	9. The Fallen

**Chapter Nine: The Fallen**

There were eight of them in the Cabinet, and they stood and clapped as the new Prime Minister entered the conference room.

"Nevermind, nevermind that. Everyone: sit," growled Prime Minister Oehler.

They sat. Most had expressions of uninhibited respect. A few looked curious.

Oehler leaned over the table with dark eyes. "Please," he said, "there shall be no applause until I get good news. Has anyone good news regarding Kimball's assassination?"

_Well, she's been assassinated_, thought one in particular, though he put on a reluctant face like all the others. _That should be good enough news in itself._

His name was Rudyard Sturgess, and it was long enough that he waited for this sort of opportunity: Secretary of Public Relations in the Prime Minister's very own Cabinet. Imagine!

The Prime Minister wasn't a complete fool. He knew the Primists were aching for power, and would become more hostile if he didn't include some in his Cabinet. What he didn't know was that it was Rudyard Sturgess, avid Individualist who was one of the Kenshi who suggested Kimball's assassination in the first place. She was a pitiful woman, to say the least, and he knew that any action against her would please Joseph Allen to favour him over others.

In just a few months, it turned out that Rudyard was the highest ranking government official of all the Kenshi, and was in the perfect position to put some fireworks in motion to ensure his own place in the future.

No, the Prime Minister wouldn't be killed. Not just yet.

* * *

She fumbled and jumbled and nearly tripped trying get the dress off, but once she did, she picked up another hanging nearby and pulled it on to herself. Once she finished, she pushed her hair back behind her ears so that was no longer in her face, breathed a few times so that the previously stated face was not so red, and used the mirror to see herself from every possible angle.

"Clarisse?" a man called from outside the dressing room. "Clarisse, how are you getting along?"

"I..." Clarisse flattened out some wrinkles and sucked her stomach in, twisting herself in front of the mirror. "I definitely like this one better than the other. The style is... better. A lot better. It's just the colour; I don't think it's that good on me. Perhaps, if it was a more blueish violet, instead of a reddish one. Perhaps... I think... umm..."

She stepped out, simultaneously placing her hands on her hips, sucking her stomach in, and walking on the balls of her feet. "Inderpal? Which do you like better? This one or the green?"

The man named Inderpal Bettany had knobbly hands and a head of thick brown curls. He blinked a few times, inspecting the dress as Clarisse twirled around in it. "Are you serious? Are you really asking me?"

"Yes, of course. What do you think?" she asked again, checking the seams under the arm in front of the mirror. "I was thinking that I love this neckline-- do you see, right here? Very flattering to the front, but again the colour. I could just die! Should we ask if they have it in a different colour?"

Inderpal swallowed and came to his senses. "No, of course not! What do you need to be flattering for? You're too damn beautiful to begin with!"

The dress stopped twirling.

Crossing her arms, Clarisse stepped up to the man. She bent over and looked him in the eye so much that he scooted back in his seat. Then, she laughed, and hugged and kissed him.

"You're so lovely, Inderpal. So lovely and perfect. I love you so much," she smiled, sincerely and wrapped his arms around him, while he wrapped his arms around her. "You know, if Jeremy hadn't been killed, do you think we would've been together? Do you think we would've ever even seen each other if not for your father and my father and all this Kenshi business?"

Inderpal shrugged and took her hand. "Probably not. I don't think I would respect you half as much if I didn't have to watch over you 24/7."

"I'll consider that a compliment, I think," said Clarisse, standing up. "And I think I'll take the green dress. Less for you to worry about when other men keep their eyes off me, yeah?" She rolled her eyes, laughing again, and went back into the dressing room.

* * *

When Ian was five and Elizabeth seven, they found a can of paint in the shed. Ever since, the Ferguson front door was no longer white, but a deep shade of violet, as few other colours could be effectively cover drawings of red horses, light blue flowers, and a green thing that Ian called a "skirl."

Twenty-seven years later, the door was still violet, but no matter how hard you looked, the drawings beneath it could not be seen. The front standing light was replaced by a lamp on the side of the door just above the doorbell. The bushes that had been planted just after Elizabeth's birth were now hedges that hugged the house in so that it actually looked old.

From nowhere, Elizabeth appeared. She saw her breath from the front light, which illuminated the doorstep and tops of two bushes on either side of the door. She wrapped her scarf around her neck and rubbed her hands together as she hopped up the walkway.

Without fail, Ian came from the front door. He looked grim for it being the eve of Christmas Eve. His eyes couldn't be seen from the light, and he didn't shiver even though he was only wearing a sweater.

"Beth, I need to talk to you," said Ian, stuffing his bare hands into his armpits.

Elizabeth nodded, shivering. She alternated feet to keep herself warm. "Sure thing," she nodded and reached for the door.

Ian stopped her with an arm, guiding her back to the step. "We can't talk in there," he said in a flat tone, while Elizabeth looked on, confused. "This needs to stop. I can't have you going on like this."

She laughed it off. "Ian, you're being ridiculous. It's freezing out here. What are you even talking about?"

"You know very well," he licked his lips. "Three of Mum's friends are dead. Killed. It's a war, now." Ian shivered a bit, but continued harshly, "You can't have a foot on either side of the line. You need to make a choice. Us or them."

"Since when was it 'us?'" Elizabeth snarled. "Since when have you ever supported Mum and Dad wanting to kill a man we've never known? You were always with me, Ian, ever since we were children. Open in mind and in heart. We were never killers."

Ian raised his voice with eyes that shone in the light. "And now we are, Elizabeth. You're a killer and I'm a killer for letting this happen, and there's no escaping that. It's a silent war now, between the Kenshi and the Fergusons. What matters now is allegiance. Elizabeth, you can't be on both sides. I'm telling you, if either side were to find out, you will be... Beth, please. The consequences outweigh the rewards."

"You're talking about the perks of being a Kenshi?" Elizabeth swallowed. "If I stay committed to Joseph Allen's side, and he wins, I'd have power. I'd have influence; be swung up to the top of my career ladder. I'd be royalty; at the right hand of God. I'm nearly there, anyway. I'm nearly a Kensei, not a Kenshi. I've been protecting him from the beginning."

As Ian's breath drew, Elizabeth licked her lips and carried on, "but if he wins, he'll have to kill all my family. My parents and their friends, the people who cared for and raised me since I was born. And my brother. And what reason do I have to support a group made primarily of Primists? I've always been an Individualist, supporter of governing according to ability and the freedom of occupation. To support them would be to disregard the Dissociation War. And gone would be my homelife, my wonderful house in beautiful Israel, the land the teleports fought so avidly for."

The wind blew steadily, making Elizabeth's scarf ripple. She didn't shiver.

"But still, the question stands," she said, herself. "Do I have loyalty to my family, my past and all the pains brought by it, or do I have loyalty to myself, my future, what I could become in spite of my past. Ian, do you really want me to choose? Do you want me to pick a side?" This last question came bitterly, like a cry.

Ian nodded, slowly. He swallowed, and shivered.

Elizabeth sniffled and said, "Fine. My answer is neither. If I have to choose to save myself, as you say, I don't pick either side. Neither side has a better chance, a better outcome, nor a better way of getting there. It'll all just end in blood, and some time from now, history will repeat itself, once again as it has been doing since time existed. Then, the best choice is no choice at all."

For a moment, she shook as the wind blew harshly again, but Ian swallowed and the sight of his breath from the cold was stopped. He nodded slowly, blinking as equally slow, and he understood her. He didn't say anything back.

Understanding him, Elizabeth rubbed at her nose. She turned away and disappeared. This time, the wind brought flakes of snow.

* * *

**A/N:** Ah, no more Heroes till February. :( But a good episode. Kind of dumb in some parts. Sylar was crazy awesome as always. I think they randomly knocked people out far too much. All in all... decent. No greater feelings.

Except, the final scene. With the President?

Nice touch, NBC. Really nice touch. xD

In other news, this chapter is named for a song by Franz Ferdinand. I really thought it described Adam well. Then I read it was actually about Jesus.

Ha. Ha.


	10. The Winter and His Snow

**Chapter Ten: The Winter and His Snow**

It was snowing. Despite this, Kate was outside sitting on her porch swing with nothing warmer than a sweater on. She hugged her knees up close to herself, and listened to her own breath and heartbeat as the snow fell from the clouds. It was, as she thought, incredibly beautiful.

A blanket was wrapped around her and she smiled momentarily, pulling it closer to herself with a, "Thank you, Athan."

"It's cold," said Athan, sitting beside her. He rubbed his nose and stuck his gloved fingers in the armpits of his coat.

"It's beautiful," said Kate. "Haven't you ever just sat outside and watched the snow? Just fall, just so silently and brightly. In a few hours, everything will be covered in white. Everything."

Athan sniffed and wiped his nose again. "I did, once," he said, laughing a little. "In first year, Robert Mozingo melted my shoes and tied me to the flagpole. No one noticed for a few hours."

Kate covered her mouth, but laughed as well. "You were alright, then?"

"Yes, no harm done. Just a little frostbite. You're right though, the snow was beautiful," he sighed. He pulled his own knees up to himself and stared blankly in front of himself.

She nodded, and watched it, again. "They always made fun of you, but you never card, did you? You knew all their little gossip secrets, and so you knew you were better than them. You just ran your own way. You still do that, don't you?" she asked.

"I used to. I used to think that I was always right, and I felt sorry for all the others that didn't know any better. Then, I got thrown into the real world and realized that it was I who didn't know any better. It hardly matters who is right, or even what is right. Reality doesn't bend to truth." He rubbed his nose again.

"And?" she asked, turning her head to him so that her ear pressed to her knee. "What does matter?"

"Happiness," said Athan. "Living for the sake of living. Setting yourself up for the unadulterated bliss by the freedom of possibility and the release of tedious annoyances."

Kate swallowed, almost laughing again. "So you're saying when you were just a schoolboy, when you didn't care what everyone else thought and when you yourself thought you could do anything once you graduated; that was happiness? That was what life is all about?"

"I said that was the only thing that mattered, not that that was what life was about. That freedom of possibility ends in ultimate disappointment and realization that you were never that good to start with. Then, the release of annoyances never lasts for long, and eventually you're brought back to earth with the burden of trying to find your way out again. The key is to accept the burden, and mold it with yourself to give the happiness to others, and receive happiness for yourself. I used to be happy in school, but I never realized it. Now, I'm content with knowing that I'm with a revolution to bring the world back to how it used to be. Hopefully, people will appreciate the point of a large, multi-ability community."

Kate nodded, meekly. "Athan, do me a favour?"

"Anything," Athan responded.

She paused for a moment, but she said, "Don't call it a revolution. I've already been through a revolution, and this isn't it. If it was, my children wouldn't be better off during it than they were before."

"You're welcome," Athan said with a courteous nod.

"I didn't even say thank you, yet!" Kate smiled brightly. "But really, I can't even remember the last time I felt so safe. Being with Joseph is like being a drug dealer in a room full of German Shepherds. You never know when something might slip or who might just find something out and connect the dots."

Athan nodded, understanding. "Speaking of him, where is your husband? He, not I, should be here, watching the snow with you."

"Yes," Kate said sorrowfully. "Well, you should know better than me where the heck he is. Half the time, I never know what he's doing. But then again, that's the way it's always been." She shrugged, but frowned slightly.

"Kate," said Athan. He looked her in the eyes, and said most sincerely, "it is one of the world's greatest regrets to think that you have just become a mother and a wife."

She turned her head to look at him. Her eyes were slightly red and watered, although it was impossible to tell if it was just from the weather. She blinked a few times, without emotion, and then closed her eyes and leaned in.

Never would she ever forget her first kiss with Joseph Allen. She remembered every time someone mentioned peanut butter, or jam, or knife. And every kiss with him after that had some resemblance to the first, with some sweet taste that kept her heart light.

The kiss with Athan was a bit of the same, tingling sweetness. It was also inexplicably different. While all of Joseph's kisses were built on natural chemistry, and had a theme of romanticism, Athan's kiss was soft and solid and had spoke one word: Devotion. His nose was also cold as it pressed on her cheek, and Kate pulled away just as suddenly as she leaned in.

"I love him, you know that?" she started to cry. "What's wrong with being 'just a wife?' He has my heart, Athan, and he'll keep it! I don't even care what he does with it! I love him! And I-- I just c-couldn't-- I don't know." Kate sobbed into her knees. She shook and shuddered, and only looked up once Athan got up off the porch swing.

"I'm sorry, Kate, I'm sorry. Kate? Kate, please! Forgive me! I'm sorry!" He swallowed, pressing his lips together. His own eyes started to water, seeing her so hysterical. "I think no less of you being so devoted to him. You know I would be the same, had I been born--"

"Shut up! Stop it! Just... just don't speak to me for the next twenty-four hours and I'll be fine," she sobbed. "And don't you say a word to anyone!"

Athan swallowed again. "Cross my heart, Mrs. Allen. Again, I--I'm sorry."

Kate wiped her tears and looked after him as he slowly and awkwardly turned and left. She soberly pulled the blanket closer to herself. It was getting cold.

* * *

"Papa?"

It felt odd. It felt odd to her, being an old woman and saying this. The facts were these: Mei was seventy-four. Her hair was no longer strikingly black, but a light gray. Her eyes played tricks on her and her ears seemed only to hear half as much as before. Her skin sagged with dots and freckles, and her one knee screamed if she stood up for too long. The doctors would gladly relieve all her pain and difficulties, but they didn't know. They never lived before the Year Zero, and they didn't understand that getting old was just another part of life, and to deny it? To deny it was to deny life itself. They didn't understand.

Here he was, Makoto Takahashi, Joseph Allen, Adam Monroe, Takezo Kensei, whoever the hell he really was. Here he was, sitting in his sitting room, looking as young as ever. His hair was still a bright blond and his figure was fit and strong. He blinked the same way and he sat the same way, like a statue that looked exactly the same every time you visited it.

"She checks out, Mr. Allen," the suited woman who escorted her in spoke. "No connection with the Fergusons except the obvious, of course."

Mei shook herself off from the woman's grip, remembering when she could knock out suits like them without a second thought. She swallowed, trying to look sternly at Adam, but such things are difficult when you're leaning on a cane.

"Mei?" Adam smiled. He looked pleased. He stood up, hugged her, and kissed her on the forehead.

Her emotions melted and her eyes watered, but Mei didn't hug him back. "Nevermind, Papa. First, let's just ignore the past thirty-five years, shall we? I hardly care anymore that you faked your death, leaving me with no hint of anything. Nevermind. I know you never hold on to the past."

He looked like he was about to say something further, but he looked down awkwardly. Mei was fuming, but she sent thoughts of happiness to Adam's brain. He looked thankful for these, and it didn't surprise Mei in the least that he suspected her of messing with his emotions.

"I..." she started, but found herself caught. She stared into his eyes. "I can't stand this war. A war between my children and my father, imagine that? All of these deaths are reason enough to stop."

His eyes darted away from hers, but his voice was annoyingly smooth. "You understand how things work, Mei. There are just some things that have to be done."

"They don't have to be," she shot back. "Please, Papa. I can convince them."

"You can 'convince' them?" Adam almost laughed. "Impossible. All they want is for me to be dead."

"Then maybe you should die!" Mei fought back the tears. She couldn't believe she was saying this, but she was. It needed to be said.

Adam glared at her. "How dare you?" he hissed. "How dare you suggest such a thing? I'll kill them all if I have to, if only for self-defence."

"It's not self-defence! It's hunger. You're hungry for power and all of these people playing into your hand," Mei gave a laugh. "It's perfect, isn't it, having all of these Kenshis worshiping you like a God? You love it, don't you? The power. If they hadn't come up with it at all, you would be fine, but oh-- the temptation! Since it was offered to you..."

Adam roared this time, "And so what? Why don't you leave? Let me live my own life! Who are you to come into my house, telling me what to do? You're just a child!"

"Yes, you say that. We're all just children in your eyes," Mei leaned upon her cane. "I love you, Papa," she let out bitterly. "I have loved you my whole life, and I have done everything that you asked of me. Everything, for you. But now, Papa," Mei smiled, wiping her eyes and turning to leave, "you are the child."


	11. The Waltz

**Chapter Eleven: The Waltz**

The waiter nearly floated past the tables to one nearer to the corner of the restaurant, where the common conversations could not be heard and the light music of the violins and piano. The restaurant was a very fine one, one of the best in London in fact, that gave way to the classic dining experience. The tables were set with deep red tablecloths, live rose centrepieces, candles, and an extensive choice of silverware. By far the most impressive feature of the building was the glass dome ceiling that showed the stars clear and true no matter what the weather. That, and the food and service was to die for, as claimed by most local papers.

"Compliments of a friend, my dear Sir," the waiter said with a flourish, and placed the glass in front of the man.

Adam lifted the drink, inspecting it carefully. "Another?" he spoke with almost a groan. "Do you remember who bought this drink for me, or let me guess--"

"I'm truly sorry, my dear Sir, but I honestly cannot recall," the waiter blinked and said with some difficulty.

"Nevermind," Adam waved him off and passed the glass to a woman sitting behind him. "What do you think, Kate? Six complimentary drinks, and at least six unknown followers of mine in this restaurant." He looked past the five empty glasses on their table and scanned the other diners, all of which had their eyes averted to their own business and seemed to be engaged in their own conversations.

The woman at their back spoke, "Liebfaumilch, champagne, and cinnamon."

He took the glass and held it up to his nose. "Yes, you're right. A One-Balled Dictator. I haven't one of these in decades. At least someone here has good humour. Kate?"

Kate shook her head, although she took her hand up to sip her wine. Instead, she looked and watched Adam as he raised it to no one in particular and downed it quite gratefully.

"You poisoned them, didn't you? They're not from real fans. All six of them are from you, is that right?" he placed the empty glass on the table and eyed her cheerfully. "What a way to kill a man."

She laughed a bit and smiled wider, otherwise ignoring his jovial comments. "I think it's wonderful," she said. "Look, just look at this beautiful restaurant, full of people while we have our people here protecting us," she looked to the three guests in the table behind them, who ate their steak with a watchful eye over the restaurant. "And look, up at the stars. It's such a clear night, don't you think so! Beautiful stars! And you too!" She grasped his hand, "Us. Together. There's so much to be grateful for!"

"Kate, I do believe you've had too much to drink..."

Kate stopped, and grimaced a bit. Her cheeks were cheery from the wine and her eyes sparkled in the candle. "Can we dance?" she asked of him.

He paused and thought for a moment, studying her like a scientist to a test subject. She kept her innocently joyful face. "Why?" He sipped his wine.

"C'mon! We always used to dance. Joseph, don't you remember? We had such fun dancing!"

"It was different back then," he explained sternly and folded his arms. "Back then, I was courting you. I never actually dance for fun."

She didn't take longer than a moment to believe him. "Courting me? Since when we married? We're still courting!"

"Legally--"

"Yes, legally, but not really. Legally, my name is Katherine Watson, but that doesn't make it my real name." She looked bitter, but was playfully bitter and had such fun complaining. "We never stood in a church, nor a courthouse and I've never said 'I do.' Until I do, we'll be courting, and be able to separate at any time without any disastrous effects," she added on sarcastically.

Adam tried again with a serious, "This band is perhaps the worst--"

Kate ignored him. "Admit it, you always enjoyed it. You loved dancing with me. Why not now? What's changed?"

Glancing back at her with a suspicious eye, Adam listened to the active sounds of the diners and band as his own conversation came to silence. He didn't respond to the question, but found his humourless disposition broken once Kate mocking him, crossing her own arms and making brief comments in a baritone voice about how the steak was overcooked and how dancing was for silly women. He shuddered, then laughed aloud, and kissed her hand as he led it to the dance floor.

The dance was the waltz. It was quite apparent that Adam and Kate were of the only ones in the restaurant that truly knew the dance, as if it had been a forgotten art. They stepped and they spun and they flourished, all the while when no one was watching too carefully, but everyone, regardless of if they were dancing, eating, serving, or being on Kenshi duty, looked cheerful. Everytime Kate would laugh, she would nearly trip and her steps would be off, but by the end of the song, it hardly mattered anyway. Adam laughed too, once she laughed, and at some random moments, they would find themselves fumbling around, trying to dance while they giggled over nothing.

They left some time after, when the restaurant was nearly empty and the sound of the band was replaced by the sound of clattering plates as the waiters cleared the tables. Kate and Adam were arm and arm, huddling together for warmth as they hummed the songs of the evening. Snow flurried around them, and the heater beat out the chill air once they found and settled into their car. Kate stopped her complaining of how cold her ankles were and started it up to hover in the air.

"Oh! Snow!" After some time, Kate peered through her windshield to see the flakes floating down from the sky, as if on a Christmas card. She lowered and slowed the car down enough to see the snow, and to enjoy it, as at regular speed, they would be flecks whizzing past them in a millisecond. She smiled dreamily, and relaxed her hands from the steering wheel. "I bet the Kenshis won't mind if we took a little longer to get home," said Kate, adjusting her rear view mirror to see their protectors' headlights following them at the back.

"Joseph," she started slowly, with a swallow, "do you ever just watch the snow?"

While her eyes looked brightly at him, Adam blinked. He said after a long pause, "No."

Kate knew he was just being honest.

They watched in silence at the white coming from the wonder of the sky. They both fully knew as frozen precipitation too heavy to be carried in cloud, but at this moment, they tried not to care. They tried to see it as a wonder, as magic that came from the heavens and blanketed the pine tree forest below with a white powder that just made everything silent.

It was broken by the sound of the radio. "I love this song! It's absolutely terrible, but it's fantastic!" exclaimed Adam as he turned the volume up. The upbeat techno music filled the car as Kate rolled her eyes and drove on.

"You're ridiculous!" she growled. "Can't even take five seconds to appreciate nature!"

Adam was saying, "Oh, cheer up, Kate! It's snow! It's frozen precipitation falling to the ground, and it comes every year, doesn't it? Kate? C'mon, Kate!"

He started to bop his head and sing along to the song, even though she didn't know it as it was before her time. It was quite ridiculous too, as the radio singer was a clear woman, and the tune of the song was pathetic. Meanwhile, she tried to stay angry, but couldn't stop the fits of laughter she had from glancing back at him.

"'Cause everytime we touch I get this feeling! And everytime we kiss, I swear I could fly!" he sang, very dramatically with added animation to his hand movements and leaning in toward Kate, as if he wrote the song for her.

She was nearly crying from laughter. "Joseph, you are ridiculous! Absolutely and completely hilarious!"

"Sing with me! C'mon!" he laughed and begged. It was so long, it must have been an extended version.

"No! Youre-- You're so... so embarrassing!" Kate made out.

Adam was still dancing. "Like anyone can see. We're all alone, Kate. Just you and me singing our hearts out!"

"Ca-Can't you feel my heart beat slow?" she leaned back and belted out. "Oh! I can't let you go! Want you in my--"

It was thunderous, perhaps because of the sudden brake system kicking in or some part of the car giving out when it was poked the wrong way. The jolt of the impact stopped them, and they both were flung forward, both slamming themselves into the front and windshield of the car. The power died and the radio stopped. For a moment, all was silent, and Adam looked up to see the trunk of a pine tree through the windshield. Then, the car lurched with the weight, and creaked and roared and fell through the branches, hitting each one with a rustle and shake that removed its snow. It fell for some hundred meters and landed with a final crash with as much impact as the first. It leaned and creaked again, then finally settled.

The snow fell.

* * *

"...Mr. Allen?"

Adam opened his eyes briefly, squinting. His vision was cloudy and red, but it was soon clear to reveal Gareth Nehru, one of his knights, as he liked to call him. His head was cloudy as well, and he couldn't think much more above "it's cold" and adjust his shoulder so the bones could heal. He could also see that Gareth had some metal rods in his hand, which must have went through him in the accident and prevented him from healing right away.

He groaned seeing his breath in the cold, and turned his head.

"Kate?"

The forest was dark, but the area had been lumbered enough to let the moonlight from above filter through the trees and land on the ground. Through this blue moonlight, he saw Kate. Her head was turned the other way, and although her hair curled for the occasion was sprawled all over, nearly none of it covered her face. Her skin was blue, like the moonlight, but at her hairline and into her forehead, it was unmistakably crimson.

"Mr. Allen, I think we should--" Gareth placed a hand on him.

Adam whipped back, glaring with furious eyes. "Get off of me!"

He turned back to her. "Kate..."

The wind whipped at them, and blew gently at her hair.

He lifted his hand, and as it was trembling a great deal, tried to shake her shoulder.

"Kate!" he begged. He pleaded. Her body shook, but she did not wake. "K-Kate! ... Kate, please!" He swallowed, and once he breathed out the wind spiked the cold at his tears. "No! No, please! Kate! Wake up!" He shook her harder. "Come back! Please... please don't!"

She was still. She did not wake.

Adam swallowed again. He withdrew his hand. He stared. It was silent. It was especially silent since it was snowing, though flurries again, with the wind picking up now and then.

He stared, silent still. His eyes were wide and he rarely blinked. They were, in a first glance, of terror, fear, and disbelief. In a second and closer glance, they were of regret. Again, once again, like many times before, she was gone.

* * *

**A/N:** Was there any reason for me to put Cascada randomly in this chapter?

....Ummm. I forgot. :\

On the other hand, yes as you see we get these chapters into the double digits, the story is winding down. The end is near! Beware! :[


	12. The Smoke

**Chapter Twelve: The Smoke**

_This_, Adam thought, as he watched his children crying over their mother, _is ridiculous._

He was devastated, no doubt and of course. He carried his own sadness and guilt for surviving while he saw Clarisse fall to her knees in tears with her boyfriend (whatever his name was) trying every word in the dictionary to comfort her. He saw his youngest son, Luke act like a blubbering baby as they saw Kate's lifeless body and came to realize that never, never would she be coming back. What ever they were feeling, he was feeling ten-fold. After all, she was his wife, or almost-wife. He had loved her like any man to a woman.

It was a strange feeling to Adam, but a very familiar one. He could hardly keep himself from crying, and when he did stop, it started all over again. Then, came the reality. The reality was terrible. It was the worst thing in the world. It was the fact that he was getting used to this type of mourning.

She had been number twelve, and even countless times before her death, he made excuses to say that she was more than a number. They were in love with each other, and cared for each other, and did whatever they could to make each other smile with carrot cakes and laugh with little jokes. She had always supported him no matter what, even if she knew he was wrong, in all of his trials and political adventures. He didn't quite know why, but he blamed it on the power of love and devotion, and tried his best to return the favor with tolerating her obsessions with how the house should look and with having a happy family. He never wanted the kids.

Speaking of them, are they_ still_ here? They haven't moved from their spots of mourning for the past half hour. He himself was situated, crying quietly to himself in the corner, although his thoughts continued to be cruel. He never did like children, and although at times they were worth it for practical purposes, this set of kids were especially spoiled. They were little brats, always wanting this and that. Mei was never like that, was she? Mei was always mature and respectable and always did what you asked. Clarisse and Luke wouldn't do anything unless you threatened them. Thank goodness the others were adults now, he'd never have to do anything with them again.

Now that Kate was dead... Well, now Kate was dead. She's gone. Dead, he tried on for size, and looked upon her body. He had seen it coming, of course. They all died sooner or later. They were all mortal, and he reminded himself of this time and time again.

But, she wasn't supposed to die yet. It had been thirty years since Adam was single, and the point was to pick someone young, so that he wouldn't have to go through this devastation stage so often. She was supposed to live for sixty more years, or longer if technology permitted her. Adam wasn't ready for her to die yet. It wasn't her time. She was still so young. Forty-eight years? Why did she have to go now? Why did she have to die? It was his fault, wasn't it? He had been distracting her, if he wasn't such a goddamn idiot and wasn't singing techno, then perhaps she might have lived. How ironic it was that although they put up with all this Kenshi business, she dies by car accident? It definitely wasn't a conspiracy.

God, God, God! Why was I being so stupid?

It was the smell that reminded him of the inevitable. Not the smell of her, it had only been an hour or so after her death. It was the smell, the intoxicating smell of the whole goddamn hospital. Why bring her to a hospital at all? She was already dead by the time she hit the ground, Adam guessed, or hoped rather, as a quick and painless death would be the best one anyone could wish for, as they said. The smell of the hospital. It smelt like clean-- no, sterile things. It didn't smell like death as he knew it, not by definition, like rotting flesh. It smelt... like a hospital. That was enough to describe the horror of it, the way it made Adam's stomach churn and his neck sweat. He hated hospitals. The smell, the look, the paint, the beds, the machines, the people, the point. Hospitals, simply, did not apply to him, and so he hated them. He needed to get out of there.

He rose from his chair.

"I--" he started, but his throat was caught for a moment. His children, Clarisse and Luke, looked upon him with big eyes, and he was surprised at himself that he did feel sorry for them at that moment. He continued on. "I...I'll be needing a m-minute," he said. "A-alone."

They nodded, turning back to their mourning and thinking that they understood. Adam looked them over woefully for a final time, a few seconds before he left the room.

The winter air was fresh compared to inside, though still chilly as it had been all night. The sky was showing faint signs of the morning, but it was still dark enough. Adam stuck his hands in his armpits and rubbed himself together.

Then, he broke down, again.

Couldn't I have just watched the snow with her? If she had to die, then let it be, but if only I wasn't so selfish. If only-- His thoughts wobbled with his face and throat, which were choked with tears. God, he needed to stop. He needed something.

"Smoke?"

To his right, a man was offering him a cigarette from the box, while the stranger himself was shivering and smoking to the sky.

Exactly. God, he hadn't had a smoke in ages. "Th-thank you," he spoke hoarsely, and took one gratefully.

"Mr. Allen, no!"

Adam had enough sense to question why Gareth, following close behind him, would say such a thing, but once her looked, he was gone.

Gone was the hospital parking lot. Gone was the freezing winter air. It was instead replaced with concrete walls. They looked all too familiar.

He suddenly was slammed against one of the concrete walls, and he wriggled uncomfortably to crack his bones back in place. The invisible force held him in place as he snorted and growled, "Fuck, Peter. This really isn't the best time."

Peter put the box of cigarettes in his pocket and threw his coat onto a peg on the wall. "Who says everything has to be on your schedule, Adam?"

He sat himself in a black chair, one of four scattered in one half of the bare concrete room. In the other three black chairs, there was two men and a woman, who all stared at him with blank looks. He didn't recognize them, but could only guess who they were. Since Year Zero, only three mimics (excluding Peter Petrelli) escaped the Empathy Extermination, which was done for the people's own good, of course. To prevent things like this happening.

"Sit," said Peter. He dropped his hand, dropping his hold of Adam and pointed to a single white deskchair in the middle of the room.

Adam swallowed. He looked at the deskchair. "I'd rather--"

"Sit," Peter said in a louder voice, and Adam felt his muscles move on their own, lowering himself down into the seat.

"Know why you're here, Adam?" he asked.

Adam blinked a few times wildly. He found he couldn't move, although it was not clear if it was by his own surprise or Petrelli's ability. How could this be happening all of the sudden? How could this be happening now? This was a dream. It had to be a dream, didn't it? If he was lucky, Kate dying was a dream as well. Never, never would this happen. This wasn't the way he was going to die. At least, not now.

"Adam, you are going to be dead before you leave here," Peter started with some interest. "You know, I have had fun, looking through your past for an appropriate cause for your death. Murderers of eight billion people just don't get shot. You've got a really, very interesting past, Adam."

What? If Peter had been through his past, then through most things he had ever done, Peter was there to see it. Adam found that quite unbelievable, but as he found himself without the ability to speak for whatever reason, he wondered what he finally decided on.

"Believe what you want," he laughed. "I finally decided on what I believe to be the best solution. I'm not going to kill you, and neither are any of my colleagues here." The other mimics had been watching with interest, and looked intensely at Adam.

Peter withdrew a gun from his side and placed it tenderly on the desk in front of Adam.

"You are going to kill yourself," he said.

* * *

**A/N:** Merry Christmas, all! Yeah, I don't give anything for being politically correct. Hey, if some Jewish guy wants to wish me a Happy Hanukkah, yeah man, same to you! I'm just real cheery, and you should be too! Relax, take a breather. It's Christmas. Be happy.

And a nice Christmas present I give to you, the first (well, second) written in Adam's point of view. Let me say this was way too easy to write. It was weird. Anyways, Happy Holiday! Perhaps I shall update early tomorrow. Hm...


	13. Death

**Chapter Thirteen: Death**

Adam waited for it. His heart pounded through his ears. He found himself out of breath, sweat through his back and face that he did not dare to wipe. He waited, and he looked fearful of the gun, and fearful of his own hand when it would reach for it and pull the trigger right in his head...

It did not come.

"Well, aren't you going to do it?" he asked of Peter.

"I said," said Peter, leaning on his chair, "you're going to kill yourself. If I used by ability to make you kill yourself, then I would be killing you. That would be beside the point."

Adam blinked for a moment, and found he could stretch his fingers and arms. He used his legs to push himself up from the deskchair, but he chose to remain seated. Well, Peter wasn't always the clever one, he thought until he remembered that his thoughts were probably being read anyway. "I don't quite understand..."

"Don't you ever think such a thing to be possible?" Peter asked in a sociable voice. "Don't you think you could ever want to kill yourself?"

Adam shook his head. This was odd. "Of course not..." he started suspiciously. "Why would I ever want to kill myself? Why would I ever want to die? Death is for..." He searched for the word.

"...People," finished Peter. "But you, you're a god. Gods don't die. Gods don't want death. Gods never feel pain for all the sadness and guilt they have experienced in four hundred years."

"Four hundred and fifty," Adam pointed out. He was beginning to relax, and he even slouched in his chair a bit.

Peter smirked. "Four hundred and fifty two. Your birthday was last week."

It caught Adam by surprise. His heart nearly skipped a beat and his eyes widened. He really was serious, wasn't he? Peter had been shadowing his past all of this time. It was curious too, as throughout different parts, he always saw a glimpse of someone that seemed familiar. He never took that seriously either. "I-it hardly matters," he swallowed, recomposing himself.

"Does it?" questioned Peter. "Did you ever care that your mother died in childbirth? Your first significant woman you killed, and by far it wouldn't be a last."

"That's being petty," snapped Adam darkly.

"That's telling the truth. Had you ever known your mother, I assure you you would've turned out differently. But instead, you just had pub-crawling father in a boring little English village called Shippington."

Adam responded suspiciously with, "It hardly matters. Never, never have I thought twice about leaving that godforsaken place. It's not a part of me. It doesn't make a difference where I came from. I've blocked it all out."

Peter stared Adam in the eyes with a fierce look. "But see, it does. It makes all the difference. I believe that within every start, there is the choice of good and evil. With such a start, you became evil, became part of a gang in Dover, pickpocketed old gentlemen, and lit homes and ships on fire. But even before all of this, you were just a little boy from a little village."

Adam almost laughed. "Peter, you are so naive. Still after all these years, you still believe in good and evil? I learned a long time ago that there isn't. There is only illusion and reality."

"I believe," said Peter, "that everyone has a human soul within. And yours, Adam, is there, buried under centuries of memories. Four hundred and fifty years ago, you were a boy. You played hopscotch with your brothers and listened to scary stories that kept you up at night."

"Never," Adam fought back fiercely. This was getting annoying, now. "Never was I such a... so..."

"Insignificant? I know you deny it, Adam, but once you were human. You were an unloved little boy with nowhere to turn to. So you just drove on and tried to find some meaning in your life."

His teeth bit into his lip. "What are you even talking about? I knew enough where to go. I didn't run away. My family and village were fine, just too boring for my liking. Too slow and--"

"You ran away. You weren't wanted. Adam, listen to me," Peter leaned in closer to the desk. "You were unwanted. You were looking for someone to love you."

"That is," Adam cleared his throat with difficulty. His mind was buzzing. What was Peter getting at? "That is the most ridiculous thing I have heard in my entire life. I know my father and brothers loved me. I didn't want their love. They were all just idiots. They were plain and stupid. They never strove for anything. I just wanted to be somebody."

"And so you were. You ran away and told everyone you were Jack Tudor, long lost nephew of the King of England, himself. All of your little Dover friends either believed you or didn't care. And you were well content with all of them, if not annoyed by their own stupidity. Anytime you couldn't take it, you ran away again, and again. Another country, another name. For centuries."

Adam swallowed. "Stop this, Petrelli. You've got no idea what you're talking about." He was shaking.

"You know what I found really interesting?"

"Don't," he growled harshly. "Don't you dare."

Peter dared and smiled a little. "Your first name..."

Adam grasped and covered his ears. "Don't you say it!"

It was no use. Peter just amplified his voice louder. "Your real name. The name your mother gave you..."

"Stop it!" he cried. Immediately, he reached for the gun. He held it up to his own head. His finger was on the trigger. "I swear, I swear to God. Don't you say it..."

"Mr. Allen!"

There was a whoosh in his ear and Adam took some moments to realize what was going on. The gun in his hand was gone, being knocked out of his hand. When he looked up, one of the mimics lifted his arm to do the same to Peter, but he had been too slow. As if on instinct, Peter lifted his own arm, and the other mimic was slammed against the concrete.

The man had his hands up to his throat as he was pinned up against the wall and spoke in a hoarse whisper, "Please, Mr. Allen, forgive me. I tried..."

With a roll of the eyes, Peter let his hand drop, and the man fell to the ground. "I knew you had something up your sleeve, Adam. But, really? I must say, recruiting a mimic as a Kenshi..."

"But of course," Adam yawned. His face showed no signs that he had been hysterical just moments before. "That one's the second-cousin of one of the original Ten. I promised him my right hand if he could keep tabs on you. Unfortunately, he never told me about any of this ambushing business, so I must assume he wasn't entirely on either of our sides."

Peter almost laughed. "You really have no intention of dying?"

He raised an eyebrow, as it was a rhetorical question. "I've already told you. If you're waiting for me to kill myself, you're going to be waiting a very long time. What do I care about my first name? It's just a name. They're just words. You really thought I would shoot myself in my head just from hearing a name? Pity, Peter. I thought you were smarter than that." He paused. "But, then again..."

"What now, Adam?" Peter interjected. "Any more tricks up your sleeve? I know you know you can't do anymore. You won't get out of this one. This is the end of the line."

Adam tried to sneer. He really did. But, truth stopped him. Peter was right. He had no other plan to escape. Nothing could defeat Peter except another mimic, and that plan had failed. And what else? Nothing else. The shiver ran down his spine. His body went cold.

He was going to die.

He let out a breath when he remembered. He was going to die the moment he wanted to die. That moment wouldn't come for... a long time. He was sure of that.

"So leave me here, Peter. If you'd really love for that magic moment of irony when I pull the trigger on my own head, just wait. I've spent months in a coffin. Decades in a cell. I can be patient, if only you can."

Peter accepted this. "But then, you had something to live for. You survived on revenge. Planned out every little detail of how you would kill and torture Hiro and the others. But what now? You wiped out nearly the whole world. You pruned the ones you didn't like. You could try and kill me, but we both know how that would turn out. You do have the Kenshi, but they are a fault within themselves. In fact," he shrugged, "they aren't servants to you. Instead, you're the slave to them. Eventually, they're going to be demanding the world you promised them, and you're going to have to tell them that you never intended to work so hard in such a commitment the first place. You're a tumbleweed, Adam. As much as you're flattered by the power, you can't settle down to anything. You thrive on knowing that anytime, anyplace, you could leave and start again. But now, even though Kate's dead, you can't even do that."

Again. He was being pounded with truth. By the first few sentences, he closed his eyes and pretended not to listen. He knew that Peter knew he actually was listening, but it was in his blood to insult his abilities.

"Doesn't it drive you mad?" Peter crept up to Adam's ear. "Knowing that there is nothing else?"

He opened his eyes. "There is always something else," he swallowed. His voice was soft and dark.

"What else is there?" replied Peter in a whisper.

Adam stared straight forward. The two remaining mimics were staring, as if watching the most intense soap opera. "Her," he said in a hoarse voice. His throat was caught before it, but he had said it before he could stop himself. His eyes began to sting.

As equally as soft, "Who?"

"Her," Adam repeated again. He couldn't believe this was happening. His breath was now heavy and labored. His nose was running, and he sniffled. Once he closed his eyes, the tears ended up on the edges.

"You haven't loved anyone, yet?" said Peter. He looked sober. Morose. "Twelve wives, and you haven't loved a single one of them?"

"I've loved all of them!" Adam shouted now. He roared as loud as he could, as if Peter couldn't hear him. He could, obviously, and took a slight step back in surprise. The tears started to run down his red face. "Do you hear me? Each and every one of them, I loved, and I bloody cried my eyes out once they died."

Despite this, Peter moved on. He looked at Adam, and he spoke in his most spiteful voice, "Loved them? You didn't love them. You loved parts of them. You loved their eyes, their nose, how they spoke, how they laughed. You loved them for their beauty. You loved them because they reminded you of her."

"Stop it! You've no fucking idea what you're talking about," Adam warned. He looked at Petrelli with all the hate that he had ever had. He tried to swallow his tears. This was his plan, was it? Well, it wasn't going to work.

"I'm just telling you what you already know."

Adam yelled again. "Then, stop it!" he cried.

"Adam," Peter got dangerous close to the other's face. He stared him in the eyes with a daring nature. "There is nothing else. She's already gone. She died long ago."

As he trembled and cried, he noticed the gun back on the desk. "N-no..." he sobbed. "No... there's s-some... there's someone else..." But, he knew Peter's words to be true.

"Yaeko..."

He cried. He held his head, and he cried. He could try to resist Peter, and live. He could live. But then, what for? Peter spoke truth. There was nothing else. There was nothing else to live for. What in the future was there to be excited for? What else was there? Always. Always, there was something else to do. Something else to strive for. Something else to plan, to think about. But now? Nothing. Everything had already been done. There was nothing else.

They were all gone. The twelve of them plus... her. Twelve times, a broken heart. A chip at the soul, already cut in half by Yaeko. And it was true. Yaeko was long gone, and love of that kind could never be found again. Her beauty, her intelligence, her smile. He could search for such things, and find pieces of them, but it wouldn't matter. She was dead. And gone. And never, even if he lived until Judgement Day, never would she return.

Peter spoke truth. Why? What was there to live for?

He cradled the gun lightly in his hand. He wiped his eyes, and found himself done with crying.

Finger on trigger. Peter didn't look happy, but instead held a strangely blank look.

Barrel to the head. Wipe nose, again.

Close your eyes. He just regretted that his last look was at Peter and his anxious mimics to the back.

Yaeko...

One last breath. Savor the air, and be glad to be rid of it.

There was nothing else...

Squeeze eyes tighter.

And pull.

* * *

**A/N:** Sorry. The holidays keep me away from home.

But anyway, can you hear the violins playing like crazy? Oh, the suspense! Welcome to the penultimate chapter. Always wanted to use that word.

Well, yeah. I have little to say other than sorry for making Peter so out of character. Yeah, I know he's not that evil or clever or powerful, really. He would much more likely to be on the other side of the gun.

Um. Right. I think I might post the final chapter tomorrow. No reason to stretch it out, aye? Ayee?


	14. Viva La Vida

**Chapter Fourteen: Viva la Vida  
**

Matthew liked to imagine things about people. He didn't know why. He just did. He would just be looking at a person, and suddenly they had a name and a complete life history. People on the train were failed circus people. His math teacher's mole became a battle wound from a wombat cage match. Occasionally, he would find out that classmates inherited their hair colour from grandmothers instead of nuclear waste in their shower waters.

Nevertheless, he believed it was fortunate of him to imagine such things, as long as he told (and therefore offended) anyone. He was a self-healer, and if he was going to live for at least a few hundred years, it would be nice to keep one's self entertained.

The day was sunny and bright. It was hot, too, and unreasonably humid as the weather people were on strike. He stayed inside, with the air conditioning blowing at his neck as he watched people through his window. There weren't many interesting people, but he did have fun coming up with reasons for wearing that bright green shirt, or what was in that bag that they hugged so tightly.

One man, who lived across the street came out from his stoop and started sweeping the sidewalk. Matthew wondered why for a while, and imagined him to be a madman sweeping at invisible mice. That is, until he noticed that he was trying to sweep the chalk smiley faces and tic-tac-toe boards away.

"Matthew? Matthew!" His mother was calling. "Still inside? Why don't you go out and find something to do? Go out and play, or something!"

Resistance was futile. His mother was entertaining guests today. He went outside and sat on his stoop. He gazed lazily at the people who passed by.

"Hey you there!" A whistle. "Yes, you!"

Matthew sat up straight, alarmed. The man sweeping across the street had stopped sweeping and leaned on his broom. He was calling to him. Never, in months since he first saw the man move in, did he ever socialize with him.

"Did you make these chalk drawings on my sidewalk?" He looked cross.

The child shook his head no. He was telling the truth, and he knew that the man had no reason to be cross. The sidewalk was public, after all.

The man leaned his broom against the wall. He crossed the road without looking either way for traffic. He walked up to Matthew's stoop and looked him in the face."Listen here, boy, when I walk outside in this bloody heat, the last thing I need to see is little pink angels and hopscotch games on my sidewalk! Do you understand?"

The boy nodded a few times, quickly. "Yes, Sir. But I didn't--"

"And I don't need any cheek from little punks like you!" the man shouted. For someone that looked in his early forties, he sure did act like a cranky old man.

"No, Sir. You don't," Matthew swallowed.

"So, when I come back when this bloody sun is set, this sidewalk better be clean! Understand me?"

Matthew spurted. "Sir, I didn't--"

But, the man already responded with a "good!" and a threatening look. He took a cigarette from the box in his pocket and lit it, then proceeded down the street. Matthew watched with his mouth gaping.

Before a minute had past, he was dragging the hose across the street and blasted the little angels and tic-tac-toe boards away.

Adam knew the kid didn't do it. He frankly just didn't care. He didn't mind seeing children in the city, but he did mind when their pathetic little drawings decorated the outside of his apartment building. It was even more satisfaction to scare some kid into doing the work for him while he took a trip down to the pub.

He walked calmly, with his hand in one pocket with the cigarette in the other. He was up to nearly five packs a day now, to make up for lost time. For forty years with Kate, he barely smoke because he was usually with her. Now, he did so freely. It helped him, as well. He wasn't completely over her yet, but doing things he wanted to do made him feel happier. There was something satisfying about drinking from the carton and having a sofa without cushions. For now, being single was just fine for him.

In the face of the blazing sun, he wore sunglasses as well. He was just getting used to the Australian heat when the weather-makers had to go on strike. Now, instead of happy temperatures of a little over twenty, they were forty and more. A few months ago, he decided Melbourne because of the lack of a language barrier. The other options had been Havana, Brasilia, Bombay, Hong Kong, and basically anywhere he hadn't lived yet. He had come to terms with the fact that he never really passed the equator, and perhaps there were many international adventures to be had.

At around noon, he entered the pub with its muggy dim lights and at least ten fans blowing about. It was decently full with people. This was the second reason for choosing Melbourne: a decent culture of alcohol.

"Alright, Hugh?"

Adam acknowledged the barman briefly as he was fetched a pint. When he received it, he drank it as if it was spring water, and as if he had just been crawling through the desert. Every decade, it was increasingly harder to get drunk. If only he didn't have so many red blood cells that were so bloody talented at bringing enough oxygen to his brain...

"Heyo! Peter! How's the wife?"

Adam flinched, coughed, and sputtered in his drink. He looked behind his shoulder, to who the barman was greeting. It was only some fat man with red hair and a thick beard. Definitely not the Peter he knew.

But then again, he could be. It didn't really matter. Peter was somewhere. If not physically, then in... some other form. It made Adam's stomach churn and mouth grimace every time he thought of it, and he hated it. He absolutely hated it.

He had pulled the trigger. He was ready to die. He wanted to die. But, when he pulled it, the gun disappeared. It was laying on the desk, again.

Exasperated, he grabbed it and put it to his head again. He pulled the trigger.

The gun, like an illusion, disappeared from his hand and appeared on the desk, yet again.

He tried once more. Peter was amused.

"Kill me!" he cried. "Please, just kill me!"

Peter said, most simply and with an evil smile:

"No."

"Enough of this! I want to die!" Adam got up from the desk and begged on Peter's leg. "Please, kill me! Kill me! I thought this was what you wanted!"

"It was what I wanted," said Peter. "For a while, I thought it would be the perfect way to end you, but then I had a better idea."

Adam sobbed into Peter's pant leg. "What? You goddamn son of a bitch! What could be worse than death?"

He bent down, but was not sympathetic. "I wanted to make you beg. Beg, like you're doing now, for sweet death. But, you don't deserve hell. You killed eight billion people. You deserve the worst. The absolute worst."

"Then, do it already!" Adam yelled. "I can't stand this! I can't stand living anymore!"

"Adam..." He lifted his chin, and looked into his eyes, but his own were practically glowing with spite. "You may shoot a gun through your head. You may try to saw it off yourself. You may even run yourself through a tree shredder. But, I am going to make sure you survive. I'll make sure you live."

"Please!" he begged. "Please, just make it stop!"

"Don't you feel it? The torture? Wanting to die so badly, but not being able to? Oh, the pain..." he mocked.

Adam tested Peter's promise. He tried shooting himself again, ramming himself into the wall, and even weakly, pathetically trying to snap his own neck.

Nothing...

He ended up curled up in a heap in the corner. He cried his eyes out. Nothing. Nothing could be worse than this. Worse than living, and surviving. The difference was that now, he didn't have a choice. He had to live. For years more. Centuries. Millennia. It wouldn't end. He knew he would have such boredom. Have such torture. He would go mad.

Peter Petrelli was more clever than he gave him credit for.

Adam woke up in the middle of a field. For about fifteen seconds, he had such hope. Such happiness. Then, he read a sign.

"Welcome to Shippington."

Petrelli had some sense of humor.

He remembered that Kate was dead, and everything that Petrelli had said. He found a piece of glass and tried to stab it through the back of his head. The moment it touched his scalp, however, it disappeared and landed on the ground in front of him. He could've sworn he heard the wind carrying laughter.

Now, he drank his pint. He wasn't so much at a loss, but he was still lost. He was still disturbed, still mad at the world and life for still existing. It was terrible. It was mind-numbing. Tedious. He tried crying for days, but no pity. Peter was always watching behind his shoulder. He wasn't a man. There was no free will. He was a prisoner. A pet. On a leash that Peter held with one devious smile.

Somehow, he moved on. How could he not? He picked up a new name, a new home. It was natural to him, like clockwork. As much as he hated the sky and the trees and the people, he tolerated them. He tried to convince himself that he brought this on himself, and that he was strong enough to withstand it. He tried to look forward to visiting new places, meeting new women. Of course, they were the same as old women. Looks and personalities are continuously recycled with a slight twist on the end. So what if his true love was already dead? Isn't plain and normal love good enough?

Never before did circumstance bring him down, even though this circumstance was increasingly peculiar. He had even reanalyzed the situation and realized that Peter had told a lie. There is only nothing when you believe there is nothing.

Otherwise, always. There is always something.

**End of Part Four**

**And The End**

* * *

Let's face it, you have Coldplay stuck in your head now, don't you? Yes, I do find it quite lame that I stuff in song references wherever I feel it appropriate. xD It's... um... called inspiration?

So. Um. Yeah.

That's the end. I hate to say "the end," since it doesn't quite fit with the storyline, but for the story, yes, it is.

Thank you so so so so so so so very much, all who have read and especially those who have reviewed. Like I said in the beginning, it was just a story that invaded my head one day, and here we are, some 70,000 words later (oh hey, I beat out NaNoWriMo). Yeah, Jesus Christ. I need to get myself a life. Well, indeed, I did finish this a while ago, and now I'm rambling on a story about a textbook definition computer geek who finds out he has a year to lose his virginity before he joins his intensely Russian and vampiric family, in an effort to write something comical and original and to take a hit at Twilight.

Um. Yeah. If anyone is really really bored and would like a chapter or two, you know. No, actually. Don't encourage me. Just tell me if that summary of a sentence is teaser enough, because I'm not really that talented at writing those. :) The important thing is to know that I've moved on. And you should too. Now.

Anyway. Much love most especially to The Famous and Most Completely Awesome Fire Lady M and Liebste Lieb Schnubbi and friend9810, because let's be honest, you're the only ones who are going to be reading this. Thanks, guys. You really have no idea what kind of magic fills my heart once I see my email inbox with review notices. Really, it's wonderful. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Lastly, since this is The Monroes, I feel I should tell you what happened to those people. The people you know as "the Monroes" that got their own chapter titles and everything.

Peter appeared both to the Fergusons and the Kenshi, assuring them that Adam Monroe/Joseph Allen was really and truly dead. Their organizations disbanded soon after. Athan backstabbed his friends, turning in all of the Kenshi in the favour of his release. He went on to write a memoir of it all, being very cloudy about the dynamics of Joseph Allen's life/death/time travel, but accurately described each plot of assassination of political figures and the mechanics of the gang. His book ended up a bestseller and is written on the Secondary Schooling Required Historical Reading List.

But, back a while, the only one to not believe Peter was Mei, who didn't bother with it and died in her sleep some ten years later, surrounded by her family. I should also note that in a side story, Charlie was indeed in love with Mark (if you didn't catch that ;) ) and found a way to kill himself before being executed for the murder of a world leader (yeah, that was a while ago). Michael and Dana lived happily enough, though didn't have much to do without Adam to hunt down. Elizabeth became a general in the World Temporal Corps and married a co-worker (er, not Samson), and never bore any children. Ian became a farmer of "exotic plants" and married a power negator, having three girls. Clarisse married Inderpal with a semi-sweet happy marriage and one son. Luke married a fancy girl on one crazy night in Monaco, but they lived very happily and had two girls and one boy.

And Adam lived on, not knowing any of this, and not really caring.

Not that you should care either. Nevermind.

But, well, thanks. And um, thanks some more. And, um, have a good night.

Or, er, morning. :)


End file.
